


Green Eyes, Star Eyes

by WanderlustandFreedom



Series: Descendants Short Stories and One Shots [12]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Ben has never seen the color blue before and he is amazed, Ben is raised inside a barrier, Blood and Torture, Denial, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamscapes, Dreamsharing, Evil Mal (Disney), F/M, Good, Mal is raised in a castle, Maleficent is insane, Princes & Princesses, Protective Mal (Disney), Psychopath Mal, Reverse Chronology, Roleswap, Same Performer in Different Roles, Sickfic, Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22362439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderlustandFreedom/pseuds/WanderlustandFreedom
Summary: Ben had long since accepted the meager lifestyle that came with being an HK, or Hero's Kid. It was a title mockingly adorned to the lesser half of the population, to remind them of exactly why they were hated. He's grown up inside of a giant green barrier in the middle of a desert, knowing that as soon as he's old enough, he's going to be sold into the real world like some live possession for the villains to enjoy.But in the marketplace, he meets someone he'd never suspected could ever be real. The girl from his dreams who he never suspected could be real. And, he learns, the person in line for the throne of the land. The same place he'd be if his family had managed to finish uniting Auradon. She, at least, doesn't seem content to let him die.___________________________"You always talk as if this is all real.""It is to me."
Relationships: Beast/Belle (Disney), Ben and Beast, Ben and Belle, Ben/Mal (Disney: Descendants), Evie & Jay & Mal & Carlos de Vil, Mal & Maleficent (Disney)
Series: Descendants Short Stories and One Shots [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593727
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	1. The Dreams

"You look like someone killed your puppy."

Ben turned upon hearing the familiar voice. Despite everything weighing his soul down, he couldn't stop the smile from spreading across his face. "Hey!" He perked up, holding out a hand to invite her to come to sit beside him. She did, straightening her jacket as she kicked her shoes out beside his and leaned back with her palms bracing into the ground.

The girl's name was Mal and she'd been appearing in his dreams since he was about thirteen. He wasn't sure why – maybe his head had just created someone he could talk to? She might have been a product of his hormone-driven fantasies, but she was still excellent conversation. After all(and he realized this with none-too-few chuckles), the easiest person to get along with was yourself.

He had to say, looking at her, that his subconscious didn't exactly have low standards. She'd grown up with him over the years but was no less alluring or breathtaking than she had been the first time she'd appeared. Sharp, angular nose, a tiny slip of mouth with little plush pink lips pulled into a near-constant curl. Pink cheeks and nose, large green eyes that squinted past black lashes and thin, shadowy eyebrows. It might be a bit odd to know her face in so many dimensions – to know all the details of her better than he even knew his or his parents – but staring at it in dreams and in his imagination all his teen years had perfected his analysis. This imaginary girl had been the fixation of his daydreams since she'd first appeared.

Mal raised an eyebrow at him, brushing her most memorable feature, her purple hair, behind her ear. Another sign of how unrealistic his expectations were. She pushed her head out to prompt him to say something. He blinked. Had she said anything since she'd sat down?

"Who killed your puppy?" She prompted upon seeing his blank look. "Or – actually – you seem like the kind of guy who'd like kittens. Or those tiny annoying chirpy birds."

"Well, I-" Ben began, then tripped and stumbled over his own words. Mal waited, then started talking to cover up the awkwardness.

"You know, if I had to peg you for a pet guy, I'd probably go for a goldfish. Something small, not a lot of maintenance, something you could talk to when you're lonely…"

"Hey." Ben wrinkled his nose up. "I never asked for your opinion on my coping strategies,"

Mal burst into laughter. Ben watched her face change like it was all in slow motion. She rolled her shoulders back as her chest filled with air. Her mouth broke into a wild smile before her first laughs reached her throat. She used to never laugh like this. The very first time she'd laughed around him, he'd been so startled that she'd begun to laugh even harder.

He loved her laugh.

It seemed a bit odd to express affection towards a person he'd created. Still, he leaned his head on his hand and whispered: "I love your laugh."

Immediately, Mal covered her mouth, ceased her laugh, and rolled her eyes. Her utter disapproval of Ben's compliment forced a different laugh up and out of his chest. "You don't have to be so indignant," he told her.

"Why are you such a sap?" she groaned. "I never asked for someone like you in my life." She picked up a rock from the ground and tossed it in her palm. The surrounding scenery was from near his home. They were hiding in a crack in the ground with pretty, colorful rocks lining the walls. Wild rose bushes bloomed twice a year and Ben would often brave the thorns to bring them home to his mom. The sky above them was an odd grey and gold. Ben's dreams with Mal often took place here or on the front steps of his home.

He ran his fingers over the earth. Jagged, needle-like rocks stuck into his skin. He cleared his throat. "We might not be coming here much anymore," he whispered. "I have to go tomorrow. I hope I'll still see you, though."

"You always talk as if this is all real."

"It is to me."


	2. The Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is sold to Mal

Ben had long since accepted the meager lifestyle that came with being an HK, or Hero's Kid. It was a title mockingly adorned to the lesser half of the population, to remind them of exactly why they were hated.

Like most of the other Hero Kids, he lived in a three-room grey flat-roofed home on a thin gravel street in the middle of nowhere. There were long lines of colorless homes to make up the sparsely populated city where the Queen had decreed they would be kept. A large, vivid green barrier kept everyone from leaving the area. There were no walls, no stores, no government buildings or services. Those were strictly for the citizenry of the second caste of the system. The lowly, heroic outcasts did without things like parks and libraries and courthouse.

Though it would have been nice. Ben had always wanted to see a library.

The heroes were forced to earn their upkeep by either processing paperwork from around the kingdom or manual labor. Ben's mother, despite her prominence, was lucky enough to hold a job in the former. Ben's father worked in the granite mines. Up until two weeks ago, Ben's hopes for the future had included a job processing papers, staying under the High Palace's radar, and not dying at an early age due to the assassination attempts that frequently plagued the heroes.

Twenty years ago, King Adam and Queen Belle had married and begun traveling about the kingdom. King Adam was the first to propose uniting the kingdoms to create one nation. All that talk had set the villains on edge – by the time the heroes began passing ideas back and forth about a deserted island off the coast of the continent where they could lock the villains away, it was too late. The villains united against the weakly-linked kingdoms and overthrew the kings and queens. They tortured those who fought back and plundered treasuries and lands before banishing all of the heroes – not to an Isle – to a deserted field at the base of a mighty mountain where they could be easily monitored and summoned. And it was here that Ben had been born and raised, son of Belle and the former Beast. The would-be rulers of the kingdoms, had they been able to finish uniting everyone.

The city was not a horrible place to grow up, at least not in Ben's childhood. It was orderly and many of the people were kind. They would protect you even if they didn't know you. The Heroic Outcasts were fed on rations and what they could raise themselves and gifted the cast-offs that no one else in the kingdom wanted, leading to an excess of drab cloth and rough yarn. No education was provided, but people like Ben's mother Belle taught the children to read and write. Ben loved to read, though all the books that came in were dirty and mistreated.

Queen Maleficent, the villainess who had ended up in charge of what might have been his country in another time, was not a bad queen. A cruel leader, sure, but she kept things in order and got things done quickly. Ben had heard that in other parts of the country, there were distribution centers and shelters and clean water. But not for the hero's children. Never for the hero's children.

When Ben was nine, the head government had come up with a demented new system to further torture the heroes that had begun to get used to being shut away. Major villains like Cruella De Vil, Gaston, and Maleficent herself had, over the years, been killing off their minions. They'd decided, instead of correcting their ways, the hero's children would step up to fulfill the need for servantry. At first, the head palace had assured them that the selection would be random. But the first "raffle" came and it was clear that they were only interested in the children of the famous heroes. Ben's parents had been trying to have another child – a sister for him – before they'd realized. After that, knowing the chances of Ben being raffled were already highly probable, they'd quit.

Ben had turned 16 months before the raffle and it was no surprise when his name was immediately drawn. He had two weeks before he'd leave home. Now one night. He'd be sent with forty-nine other children and young adults to be sold off to whoever wanted them. After that… the odds of not surviving your first three months were twenty-three to seventy-seven.

So, he wasn't going to come back, and he probably wouldn't survive the year.

It was early morning. The sun wasn't up yet. He hadn't slept all night. He had three hours left with his parents.

His mom was in the kitchen. He could hear her steps on the floor, pans sliding on the stovetop, her occasional gasps of breath when she began to cry. Part of him wanted to go out and spend whatever time he had left today with her. Watch his dad watch the sunrise. Ignore the lingering glances. The other part only wanted to stay seated on the root of his made bed, memorize the space that had been his for all his life, and ponder on the existence of his entire world.

He did finally manage to haul himself off of the bed. As soon as he'd opened the door, he could smell pancakes, which was crazy because the rations the former heroes lived on barely stretched to provide weekly bread.

In the center of the round kitchen table was a towering stack of golden-brown pancakes. Beside it, a bowl of apples that were cut small to cover the pancakes. "Mom!" Ben gasped, staring at the stack. "Why so many? You didn't need to do this!" Their food had to stretch. Belle and Adam would probably go hungry for a day or two to pay for this meal.

Ben's mom kissed him on the cheek with tears in her eyes. "Well, we needed something," she whispered, Behind her, hanging from a dull hook in the corner, was her bag for work. A mere thirty minutes after Ben left, she and Ben's dad would both be expected to be at work. Never mind that they'd just said goodbye to their only child for the last time. If Ben was purchased by someone more compassionate, they might receive his body or a notice of his death. More likely, they'd never know whether he'd died.

"You ready?" Adam asked from the doorway into their bedroom. Ben could barely see him with the dim lighting but could hear the shaking in his voice.

"There's not much I can do to get ready," Ben reasoned. "It's not like he could take anything. Whatever he took would likely be pawned off.

Not much was said over breakfast. Belle kept a bible on the table to read as she ate. Ben had tried to read it a few times, but as far as he could tell, it was specifically written to cause headaches. At one point though, she brushed a paragraph with her fingers and then said aloud: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And Ben and his dad both nodded in synonymous solemnity. At the end of the meal, Belle wrapped four extra pancakes in a clean cloth for him to keep. Ben's dad watched the sunrise come up. Ben watched his parents move, committing every motion to memory.

At ten minutes to seven, a knock came at the door. Ben's dad crossed the room to open it. No one was very surprised to see Le Feu, a former associate of Gaston's who was now in charge of this cruel system, standing outside. He sneered when he saw who was behind the door.

"Well, well, well," he snickered. "I've been waiting for this day."

Adam said nothing, only looked to the ground biting his tongue as Ben took the pancakes his mom had packed. Keeping out of her sight, he removed two and set them back on the counter. He was tempted to leave the packet as a whole, knowing they would need something to keep them through to the next week, but also pondering on the rumors that none of the children who were sent were fed anything at all, and that was why they died off so quickly. Find your own food or starve to death.

He moved to the door slowly. Fast enough to not look like he was stalling too much, slow enough to not rush to leave his home. Belle followed him to the door. He hugged her tightly, burying his nose in her collarbone and trying to conjure up every good memory that he'd ever had with her. Then, before stepping over the threshold of the house, he hugged his dad in the same way. Belle started to cry as he was released and finally took a step out of the house.

"Alright, alright," Le Feu moaned gruffly, shoving Ben to the street where a group of other teens and young adults were standing in a guarded huddle. Other soldiers were going down the street, though they looked to be almost done. Ben watched as his next-door neighbor and childhood friend Chad was hauled out of his home and into the street with his own mother sobbing from the doorstep. Chad was the son of Cinderella and Charming, so it hadn't been much of a surprise when his name came up alongside Ben's. Other friends who would be leaving him were Lonnie, daughter of Mulan and Shang, and Audrey, daughter of Aurora and Phillip.

Their little group had never had much chance of jumping under the radar. Next year would be just as bad. Jane, the Fairy Godmother's daughter, would be sixteen then, along with Melody, Ariel and Eric's daughter, and Morgan, adopted daughter of Giselle.

Ben was ushered into the crowd and stood alone for a few seconds until he managed to find a stone-faced Lonnie patting a sobbing Audrey's back. He hung beside them, drawing patterns on Audrey's back until black armored trucks came down the road towards them.

He could run. He'd be shot and someone would have to take his place, but he could do it.

He wouldn't though. He'd let whoever was left have as much time as possible.

He didn't look back at his home until he was standing with about ten other kids in the back of the van. The front door was open still as Belle and Adam wept and watched everyone depart. He hoped they hadn't seen which one he was put in. He hoped they would be able to get through the day. And he hoped that, whenever his death happened, they wouldn't be too heartbroken to go on.

The market was dark and smoky, which was somehow both what Ben had been expecting and nothing he'd thought would exist in Maleficent's kingdom at the same time. Black cobbled streets that they were taken out on one by one in chains as seemingly hundreds of purchasers laughed and jeered from the sidelines. He could see people pointing at the fairer ones as they passed. Once descriptions were added to them, looks wouldn't matter as much. Everyone would want the children of the most famous heroes.

Poor Audrey was ridiculed the moment she was pulled off by her hair. The black-masked figure shook her arm. "Aurora's kid!" He yelled to the crowd, who began to scream and catcall with increasing viciousness.

The people who looked stronger were chained to tall beams on the far left side of the courtyard. Ben was one of them whose chains were shackled to the beam and then whose arms were tied behind his back. He'd stowed the pancakes in his shirt before the chains were applied, and the cloth rubbed against his stomach in circular motions. Besides him, on either side, was Chad and Lonnie. Audrey was not considered very strong, and as such stood still with her chains shackling her to the floor. This served two purposes. One, she couldn't run. Two, no one could steal her.

The new slaves were all subdued, and then the market filled. People walked back and forth, examining each. One came up to Ben and pried his jaw open to examine his teeth, and then jeered and rubbed some yellow off of theirs before walking away. Ben didn't fight much. What was the point?

An announcer started calling descriptions as the trucks pulled away. They announced parents and a starting price. Names didn't matter much around here.

Ben tried to block out the sounds of his friends being auctioned off. His eyes were throbbing through the smoke. He closed them, and when he next peered around, everything was blurry. He glanced down the line at Chad, who had three people wearing brown and dirty white looking at him and laughing as he set his jaw and refused to do anything for them. A group of people were heckling Audrey, sneering at the form-fitting clothes she wore and snorting as she flinched away from their touches. Then, as he tried to circle around to Lonnie, he spotted a figure in all purple staring at him.

He stared right back, and almost died on the spot.

Was that Mal?

The girl's face was blank from all emotion as she studied the outline of his face. And yes, she was wearing Mal's features. That same purple hair that was cut at slightly different lengths because she did it herself. Those same large green eyes and black lashes, unhidden by any makeup at all. She looked much, much paler in real life when she wasn't surrounded by the muted colors of his home, and much smaller around all these tall people.

He mouthed her name. "Mal?"

Someone stepped in front of him and cut off his vision. It was Le Feu, from earlier, and he was grinning ferociously as he presented Ben to someone wearing all brown leather beside him. "Here he is!" He announced with a laugh so loud and raucous that others in the area glanced to see who he was talking about. Le Feu wasn't the announcer – that man was still working through some kids a bit older than Ben who didn't have as prominent parents – but he was loud enough to be. He nudged the kid in brown. "Go tell your dad that he's with this bunch. I'm sure Gaston would love to meet Belle's son."

Ben's blood ran icy. He closed his eyes and refused to bow his head or looked alarmed at all. Both men laughed before someone cut them off.

"Sorry boys, but this one is mine."

Ben didn't need to open his eyes to know that it was Mal. He did need to open his eyes to examine her as she stepped forward, fingers on her chin as if in deep thought. "Go get your lackeys elsewhere."

She took his chin and turned his head from side to side to examine him further, then racked her eyes down his frame as she walked around him. He couldn't tell if she recognized him or not. Le Feu and Gaston's son both looked miffed. "Uh, Mal," the young boy scowled. "This is Belle's son. You know, my dad's girl? We have dibs."

Mal snapped her gaze over to the boy and Ben automatically shrank away. He'd been pinned under that gaze before in his dreams when doing something stupid or trying to poke fun at her. "Take it up with the palace," Mal snapped, rolling her eyes. She pulled a sealed pot out of her pocket along with a brush and quickly dipped it before taking his chin in an iron grip that was sure to leave bruises before painting something on his left cheek hurriedly. Behind her, the two men scoffed and walked away.

"Mal?" Ben whispered, barely loud enough to hear himself over the noise. Mal's gaze flicked up and hardened.

"Excuse me?" She demanded. "You don't get to use my name." She scoffed and spun on her heel. The tips of her hair whipped past his face. He almost expected her to storm off, but she simply stood guard beside him.

"Please?" He tried again, carefully examining her reaction. "I was just hoping I could beg a favor from you."

She glanced over her shoulder, looking annoyed he was still talking to her. "And why would I do anything for you?" She demanded softly.

Ben glanced down the line where someone was running her hands up and down Audrey's trembling sides. "The girl down there," he whispered. "is Aurora's daughter. Is there any chance you could… get her too? I don't want her going to any of those people who are heckling her."

Mal turned around, slowly. She tilted her head to the side. "Old fling?" she asked softly.

Ben shook his head. "Childhood friend," he corrected gently.

Mal shook her head. "If you want her to keep alive, it's best she don't come with us. My mom will literally cook her alive and eat her heart out."

Ben flinched back. Those rumors hadn't gotten back to the city. Was that what was going to happen to him? "I understand," he whispered softly, letting his chin drop.

Mal turned away. "Jay!" She snapped into the crowd and walked away. She didn't go far – he could still see her boots when she stopped, and he glanced up as she pulled the head of a tall, brown-haired boy with red jewels in his hair down to her level. For a second, Ben's heart skipped a beat. Was she eating him? Was she a cannibal just like her mom? Or was she kissing him in front of Ben? Oh, no, she was just whispering in his ear.

The boy glanced down the line as Mal reached into her pocket and withdrew a stack of vivid green plastic bills with Maleficent's face on them. She palmed about half to him and then withdrew back to Ben. Ben watched the boy walk away, shoving people out of his path as he strode, and then stop in front of Audrey. He stroked her cheek carefully, then turned around and hissed at the crowd like he was some sort of snake. Ben caught the word: "Palace."

"Jay'll take her," Mal muttered under her breath. "Don't be fooled by the act. His dad's a pretty normal-going owner. She'll probably take stock and work in the shop."

"Will she live?" Ben asked softly.

Mal rolled her eyes. "Everyone dies, Ben. Some sooner than others."

Ben stared at her. Mal waited for several seconds, examining her nails, and then glanced up at him. "What?" She demanded in a snap.

"You know my name?" Ben whispered. It hadn't been said yet.

Mal's expression hardened. "I heard your friends say it," she snapped and then quickly left and dissipated into the crowd.

No one touched Ben now that he had the paint on his cheek, but people glanced him up and down, wondering what was so special about him. Down the line, Audrey was taken away by Jay before the person next to Chad was announced. Ben could hardly focus as he raked his head for any recollection of a sign that Mal had recognized him. She had stared those first few minutes, yes, and she had seemed open to helping him, but nothing in her eyes had betrayed her. She had barely shown anything over impartial interest. Yet he was sure that she must know him. This dream girl that was apparently real. She must know who he was. Why else would she have told Le Feu to back off?

And more than that, who was she to have such sturdy connections?

Someone seized his shoulder. "This lad has already been claimed!" The announcer laughed. The stench of fish filled Ben's breath as the man leaned in to howl in his face. The crowd following the announcer laughed along with him before he waved for silence. "Behold!" he decreed, and Ben caught a glimpse of Mal standing behind the main crowd. "The son of Belle and Beast! The would-be King of Auradon!" With an exaggerated, mocking flourish, the announcer bowed with hands held palm-up beside his head, before rising to laugh again. The crowd exploded, pointing and jeering at him. A few of them bowed low to the ground, laughing and mocking as Ben's cheeks burned.

Mal's face had gone very pale. She seemed, for the first time, startled. It appeared that she hadn't known before who he was. That if Maleficent hadn't been quicker than the heroes, their situations would be reversed. Well, not entirely reversed… Belle and Adam wouldn't have sold the children of their enemies into slavery… but he would have been her king. Not her slave.

If she didn't know who he was, why had she wanted him?

Mal stepped forward to palm the announcer the rest of her cash and then gestured for several big, strong men to step forward and loose his chains. The announcer continued on to Lonnie, who was looking very pale, as Ben was led away. He never got to see who she went to. Mal didn't follow either. In fact, she didn't even look back for him, only continued wandering around the courtyard and looking at all the other slaves.


	3. The Sickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben falls ill

"Hey," Mal appeared at the door of the empty cell he'd been thrown in about ten hours ago.

He blinked up at her. "Hey," he replied. Now that he'd seen her in real life, her dream form seemed very fuzzy, like he was looking through glasses that weren't his prescription.

Mal didn't even glance at their new surroundings as she sat beside him. "You look like… oh, how should I put this? Like the person who killed your goldfish brought it back to life before killing it again and repeating the process a few dozens times and now you're just in an emotional state of 'why'."

Ben took a little breath that was meant to be a snort and kept on staring at her face. Her angular nose… her sharp cheekbones. She still seemed too good to be anything more than a vision, but he'd seen her. She'd been real.

Mal brushed her left eyebrow a little and gave him an odd look. "Hello in there?" She asked sarcastically. "What're you thinking about?"

Ben got from his butt to his knees and leaned in, examining her eyes. Though foggy, they were the same eyes he'd seen from across the courtyard today. He shook his head as Mal withdrew a little. "You bought me today," he whispered.

"I did?" Mal wondered. Ben saw something steely behind her gaze.

"You did," he affirmed. "And you kept my friend safe. Thank you."

Mal scowled. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she declared, getting to her feet. Ben shook his head and sat back down against the wall.

"No, you do," he whispered and watched the steel behind her eyes go even harder.

* * *

In real life, the cell was cold and quite dark. A bright orange light was lit at the end of the hallway where a Guard sat, playing on his phone and standing up every so often to walk up and down the hall. Ben wasn't the only one in there. He shared the cell with two other wizened people, neither of whom he knew because they both came from the citizenry, not from the Heroes. Across the hall was someone who had feebly asked Ben a few questions about how things were back home. He'd left last year and the four people who had been purchased with him were all gone. This year, it looked like Ben was the only paid-for prisoner. The rest were people who'd broken Maleficent's laws or tried to arrange small uprisings or protests.

"How long do people usually last here?" Ben asked one who looked more personable in a whisper as he watched dew from the ceiling gather into droplets and fall to the floor.

The burly, bearded man shrugged. "Depends," he whispered. "She's still got a minion or two from the old times. If you stay under her radar, she don't seek you out. Shortest person lasted two days. Longest is still here. Most typically fizz out after eight or nine months.

"Does she eat people?"

"Sometimes. Only in dragon form or in special cases. Well… there was this one time… never mind."

"And this is the High Palace?" Ben wondered.

"Yeah. Beast's old place. They rent the rooms out and we do the upkeep. Maleficent lives on the entire bottom floor."

"And the purple-haired girl is her recruiter?"

People across the hall snorted as Ben's companions exchanged helpless looks. "Sure, kid," the person who'd been talking to him nodded. "Close enough."

"Does she come down often?" He wondered.

"Not really," the man shook his head. "No one's really sure what she does. All the higher-ups know her, though."

"Weird."

A drop of water fell from the ceiling. A sneeze began to tickle his throat. He wrinkled up his nose. "Ah-choo!" He exploded, and three soft "bless you"s came from down the hallway. The light down the hall suddenly seemed very bright. Ben sniffled and closed his eyes. A short nap. A short nap was all he needed.

"Could you wake me up if anyone comes down?" he whispered.

"Sure, kid," the same gruff voice as before assured him. "Get some rest."

* * *

The world was still foggy when he left dreamland. Someone was shaking him. The world was very, very cold and his head was very, very warm. His nose was plugged and his frame was shaking and he couldn't stop it.

"Hey, kid!" someone called to him. Their voice sounded distant. Ben tried to pry open his eyes but one seemed to be glued shut and the other couldn't focus on anything. A headache began banging on the inside of his brain. "Listen, I know you're out of it, but you gotta get up because someone's coming down the stairs now."

"Guys, quit. He's wasted. Best thing to do now is to let them take him."

What did that mean? Where were they taking him? Why? Ben opened his mouth and a delirious, pain-ridden moan escaped.

"Ah, shoot. Look at him. Poor kid can't even move. He's done."

The door at the end of the hall opened. Ben scrubbed his fingers along the floor, trying to lift his head a little as he heard footsteps. Someone was speaking to the guard at the end of the hall. A cell door opened, followed by loud talking that made his ears ring. His left ear felt like it had been filled with a load of hot air. His hearing from it was fuzzy, like he was underwater.

Someone stopped in front of the cell. Ben glimpsed purple boots. "What's wrong with him?" someone achingly familiar snapped.

"We don't know, Lady Mal," one of his cellmates whispered. "He's been asleep for a long time. Maybe he just needs to-"

"He's sick, you moron," the other snapped. "He started running a fever after he was dropped off. Kid's been a furnace since then."

There was a long moment of silence. The cell door opened, and Mal barked: "Out. You'll be in the courts today. I'll get someone to come down and get him."

What did that mean? Was he being thrown out? Were they going to wait for him to die?

The other men stumbled out and the last few cell doors were opened while Ben's was left hanging ajar. Mal gave orders to everyone. Before she could go back out past the guard, though, she slipped back into Ben's cell. He was lying in a half-curled heap against the wall of the cell, shivering face-down with his legs bracing himself against the ground. She rolled him over. She was either exceptionally strong or he was embarrassingly light. He was starving, so maybe the second option held some faith.

She brushed black off his face and frowned as she examined him. He examined her right back. Her green eyes held something there… worry. That was a look he hadn't seen before. He sneezed and then coughed and then whispered with a lot of heavy breathing in between words: "You look like someone killed your goldfish."

For a second, Mal looked angry with him. Then, he watched her draw a mask over those emotions until all he saw was false confusion. She stood back up. "He's delirious!" She told the guard, who was standing at the doors with the keys in his palms. "Useless. I'll send someone down for him in about ten minutes. Just stay here and guard him." The man nodded and said nothing while Ben groaned and curled into a heap. His left eye was throbbing and swollen closed. His left ear had started to thrum with pain. Just his luck that he'd get sick right off the bat.

It seemed like eternities before Mal returned with a complaining boy behind her. Ben recognized the boy – it was Jay, again. The boy whose father ran a store. The boy who had taken Audrey. He kicked Ben's arm to make him unfurl it and then hefted up his shoulders. Mal took his feet. They bickered down the hall, though Ben's head hurt too much to discern the conversation. He only recognized when Mal's tone went from joking and patronizing to commanding and serious.

"No, Jay, we're not taking him to the coffins yet."

"Mal, he's wasted. It hasn't even been three days yet and he's gone. Doesn't matter who he is – he's gonna die eventually. It'll be better for him like this."

"No, Jay."

"Then what? Medical center? If your mom hears you took a servant there, she'll go dragon. Or are you just gonna toss him into a dumpster somewhere?"

"Up here."

He was carried for what felt like months. Jay's hands were rough and unforgiving in his shoulders. Mal's were sturdy and steadying on his ankles. Finally, he heard Jay give an incredulous laugh and then a door opened.

"Over here," Mal commanded.

"The bed?" Jay snorted. Ben couldn't find the strength to open his eyes and see what he was talking about. "Listen, Mal, I respect your feelings, but don't you think he's a little too sick to be fun?

"Just leave him here," Mal snapped. Ben felt them heft him up higher and then drop him onto something that immediately gave way a few inches under his weight. He moaned as he felt the liquids in his ear shift.

"He's a mess," Jay snickered. "How long do you think he'll last?"

"Pay attention," Mal snapped. She lowered her voice dramatically. "If anyone asks, I lent him out to EQ. She's so busy looking at her own face that she'll never know if he was there or not. The fact he's here doesn't go beyond you or I, got it?"

"I don't get it, Mal," Jay sighed. "What's so special about him?"

"He was going to be king," Mal replied flatly. This response only made Jay laugh even more.

"So what? It's not like he has any power now. Barely anyone knows him."

"I don't want him turning into a rebellion. If word happened to get out… I don't want more drama."

"Hmm. Sure."

"What?"

"I think you think he's hot."

"Oh, yes, because ear infections and fevers are very attractive." He could feel Mal rolling her eyes. "Whatever. Just keep this all on the down-low and you and I won't have any trouble."

"You know, you wouldn't be the first person to buy someone for enjoyment. Just sayin."

"Get out, Jay."

The door closed. All was silent. Then, a burning hand passed over Ben's forehead. He moaned again and heard Mal mutter "as if" under her breath before she walked away. He heard water running. A cool cloth was laid over his forehead, and another over his neck. A third wiped gingerly at the stuff gluing his eyes shut before Mal tilted his head to the side to examine his ear. An infection, she'd said. That was certainly an idea, but he must have something else wrong with his eye.

They didn't say anything to each other. Ben fell back asleep soon after.

* * *

A collection of items sat on the table. Notably, a cooling broth that was probably the thing that had woken him up. Ben groaned and wrestled the sheets binding him to the bed until he'd managed to get his elbows underneath him. Someone took his shoulder and a hand appeared on his cheek. It wasn't a pale hand – it was someone tan with manicured hands. A pair of blue eyes swam into his vision.

"Can you hear me?" The mystery person asked.

Ben let out an incorrigible moan and dropped his head back into the mattress. The mystery person pulled him back up and helped him to roll onto his back. Ben realized, at some point during this exchange, that she was a female. "Can you eat anything?" She asked.

"Maybe?" His voice and lips cracked with the effort of moving. His ear thrummed as he groaned.

"Well, we need to get something into you. When was the last time you ate?"

"Don't 'member."

She brushed off his eyes with a cloth and muttered under her breath. He didn't pay attention as she tossed the rag out and then slowly hefted him up into a half-sitting position. Then, the door opened, and Ben groaned as a bunch of new voices clouded his fuzzy ears. When he heard Mal snapping over the other voices, he balled his fists up in the sheets and tried to sit up, opening his eyes as he did. The world was still swimming, but he could see more clearly now that the new girl had wiped his eyes off. He could see that she had vibrant blue hair – which immediately gave him a name. Evie, Mal's best friend, had blue hair. Across the room, he saw a blur of purple heading towards them.

"He's awake?" Mal asked, raising her eyebrows. Her eyes lit up a little to keep his attention easier as she seized his chin and examined his eyes.

"Yeah, but he's out of it," Evie affirmed. "I was going to try and get him to drink this."

"Are you still taking care of him?" Someone shouted from across the room. "Geeze, Mal, just let him die."

Ben managed to catch Mal's hand as she took it away from his chin. He squeezed her hand, but Mal yanked it away. "Do you need help?" She asked Evie.

"Maybe?" Evie shrugged. "He seems to respond pretty well to you."

"No idea why," Mal disregarded the statement. Ben sank back into a pile of pillows that had been put underneath his head. Evie hummed and brushed her hand over his forehead. Her touch felt too cold, though he was starting to shake with cold. She turned, took the bowl, and held it to his lips as Ben closed his eyes again. The other people who had come with Mal were fighting in the back of the room.

"Go slow," she commanded, though it was hard. His stomach pinched. If he'd been in the cell for three days before being brought here, then this could be, at the very least, his fourth day not eating anything. No wonder he felt like crap.

"Thank you, Evie," Ben mumbled when he was finally left sitting back into the pillows.

"You're welcome," Evie said on reflex, then stopped. The rest of the room went still. Then, someone with a quiet voice started speaking.

"Did you tell him your name?"

"No," Evie shook her head. "Um, uh, kid? Hey, we're going to let you lie down on your front again so I can check that ear of yours."

Ben nodded and feebly attempted to help her budge the pillows aside, soon, he was lying flat again. It occurred to him that Mal was no longer standing beside the bed as Evie pulled out a little light and began to peer inside his ear. She took a bottle of eardrops from the nightstand and quickly treated his ear. Ben let out a sigh of relief as the pain ceased in his ear. Evie chuckled and took a seat beside him on the bed so she could keep checking on him. He moved his hand to pat hers where it landed beside his head and then wrenched his head up to peer at Evie. "Where's Mal?" he whispered.

Evie's brow knit together in confusion. "She went to hang up her coat," she said slowly, glancing over towards the door. "She'll come back in a moment."

Ben shook his head and buried his face into the sheets beside her leg. "She's not so angry when we're asleep," he mumbled against her leg. "She's got a pretty laugh."

Something thudded to the ground across the room and Evie took a deep, panicked breath. Ben couldn't bring himself to care about it much as he closed his eyes. Dreams were easier. Dreams made more sense.

* * *

Mal seemed tense and angry in this dream. She forced her smiles and kept her hands in her pockets. Ben could tell they were balled up in tight fists.

"I haven't seen you in a while," Mal said through clenched teeth. "You went away."

"You've seen me in real life," Ben shrugged in dismissal. "You can pretend, but I know."

Mal blinked as if she didn't understand what he was saying. "What are you talking about?" She asked.

Ben shook his head and glanced around the room. It was large, with white walls and generic flower paintings hanging on the walls. The bed he had been lying in the last few days had no headboards, white sheets, and a brown cover. It looked like a place someone would come to stay for a few days before leaving. There was a tiny kitchenette hidden in a little alcove, and three large closets around the room. An open door showed a bathroom that was mostly hidden from sight.

"This is nice," he complimented her. "I never got to ask – is this your room?"

Mal's face twisted before she drew a mask back over her emotions. "I don't understand," she said. "We always go to your place."

Ben snorted. "Listen, I appreciate how you're now pretending you're a figment of my imagination, but I know you. I know the faces you make. You can't hide from me."

Nothing. Not a flicker of recognition, of guilt, or anything. In hindsight, he shouldn't have expected one. She was as stubborn as he was.

"Besides," he continued. "You expect me to believe that you can tell me about Evie, your best friend, in our dreams and have that information remain true in real life, but you can't understand the concept of your room because you're now an imaginary person?"

Again, Mal didn't react. She only hummed and took a seat on a wooden desk, kicking her boots off her feet and onto the floor. "So, what's been new with you?" she asked.

Ben didn't buy the bait. "You already know," he whispered. "But I'll play your game. Let's see how long you can go without slipping up."

* * *

When he woke up, he was alone, but he could tell that someone was nearby. Ben reached up and brushed his eyes. They were no longer crusty and hard. When he opened his eyes, the world was bright but clear. His ears both felt like they'd been popped. He brushed his fingertips over his earlobes. The sound still felt underwater and they ached, but the worst of it was behind him. Now he was just exhausted.

A gentle hand brushed across his back. "Hello?" Mal asked cautiously, in a guarded tone. "Can you hear me okay?"

"Yeah," Ben affirmed, curling his head further into the sheets.

"Can you eat anything?" She asked, taking her hand away. He mourned the light, warm touch as his stomach pinched again.

"Yeah," he repeated and slowly sat back up. He heard Mal walk away. By the time he'd managed to get up and turn around, she'd turned with a tray of simple foods. A flask of broth, crackers, some mashed potatoes, and noodles. She set it down on the nightstand and crossed her arms as she waited for him to finish wrestling his legs out of the twisted sheets. She didn't attempt to help him as he took the broth first and starting sipping that. It was probably best to not try to eat too much right off the bat.

"How long-" he started to ask before his throat constricted and he had to stop to block off a cough. Luckily, Mal got the message.

"You've been up here for four days. Your fever broke the second day, but you've still been waking up every once in a while to talk to us and then fall back asleep." She walked back to the desk where she'd been sitting in his dream, kicked out the chair, and then sat on the tabletop whilst propping her feet into the chair. "Do you remember anything?"

Ben closed his eyes as he sipped on his broth and then slowly moved so he could put his legs over the side of the bed. "I remember someone with blue hair. And you were angry at her." He glanced over for affirmation.

Mal's mouth quirked up at the corners. "I wasn't angry. That's just my face."

"It's just your act," Ben corrected.

Mal frowned. "I don't think it's your place to define my emotions for me, Ben," she reprimanded. "I don't know how awake you are, but you're still a prisoner. Your parentage might keep you alive for a while, but don't expect to have any power around here."

Ben rolled his eyes, which immediately brought on a headache. Mal pinched her lips at him. He closed his eyes again. "Most of it is foggy though," he admitted, quickly forming a little scheme in his head. "Someone was saying you should throw me out… people kept touching my eyes and my ears. You said you hadn't met me before."

Mal tilted her head in thought. "Jay wasn't sure you'd make it out of your dip." She chewed on her lip and Ben knew she, too, had been worried. "He was the one who said we should just cut our loses. You had an ear infection, which is why you came down with your fever and everything so quickly. It's pretty common among the hicks. Your bubble has a very different pressure and coming from there through the trucks and into the city isn't good for them." She opened her mouth to continue, then a dark shadow crossed her face and Ben knew she'd caught his trick. "You also had an eye infection. I don't remember the last one. Must have been someone else watching you."

"How many other people have purple hair and glowing green eyes?" Ben countered. "And, by the way, do your eyes really glow, or is it just the gold flecks catching the light?"

Mal scowled. Her eyes took on a glow-in-the-dark look like lightning was flashing inside of them. Ben watched, entranced, until she let the light die. "That's very beautiful," he complimented her.

Mal wrinkled her nose. "Keep your thoughts to yourself," she snapped.

"You don't need to be so indignant," Ben told her.

For a moment, Mal's expression softened. She tilted her head to the side and let out a little breath as she watched him. He watched her right back until she blinked and snapped out of it. She hopped off the desk and walked to the door, where a purple coat with leathery black wings was hung.

"Wait!" Ben called, pushing himself off the bed and struggling a little as the world tilted to the right. Mal appeared at his side, wide-eyed, to shove him back down.

"Are you insane?" She snapped. "You've been sick for a week and haven't eaten in almost a full day. Stay here and eat your crap and don't try to get up!"

"Where are you going?" Ben demanded, trying to take hold of her arms. "I wanted to ask… is this your room? Where am I? Where can I find you?"

"You won't be finding me!" Mal snapped, shoving his hands away and pinning them to his side until he stopped struggling. Ben stared. Her harsh tone kinda… stung. She took several deep breaths and then ripped her hands off him. He didn't move except to poke his lower lip out a fraction. Mal watched him. Her gaze kept him as firmly pinned as her hands had.

"I want you to stay here," she murmured finally to break the awful, awkward, entrenching silence that had seized them both. "If you come looking for me, bad things will happen. Finish your food and if you feel well enough, go shower. If not, stay here." She turned and started to walk away again.

Ben's hands shook. "Mal?" he called, squinting through his headache. She stopped but didn't turn around. "Where am I?" he asked.

Mal glanced over her shoulder. "You're in the palace," she informed him softly, zipping up her jacket. "Maleficent is two floors down. This is the room always set aside for me."

"Your room?" Ben looked around. It was very white and very standard and not very… Mal. "It doesn't look like yours."

"I said it was set aside for me. I never said I lived here," Mal replied flatly. "Now, I have somewhere I need to get to." She tugged open the door and Ben had enough sense to not call after her while the door was open. She disappeared to the outside and Ben didn't move to follow her, though everything in his body ached to bring her back.

He managed to eat the potatoes before his headache grew too painful and he had to lie back down. With a mostly-full stomach and a half-clear head, he fell back into dreamland.


	4. The Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben discovers Blue.

Mal flinched when he reached for her. He took her chin carefully, and she seemed even more repulsed. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked. "Why are you touching my face?"

"I'm just looking at your eyes," Ben assured her. He hummed as he traced his thumb down her jawline. He had never really touched Mal in his dreams. Only the occasional hug or handshake. Once he'd kissed her cheek and she'd been so offended(they were fourteen, the epitome age of awkwardness) that she'd tripped off his front porch and tumbled into his mom's mostly-empty flowerbeds and hadn't spoken to him the next time they'd dreamed of each other.

"That's disgusting," Mal grumbled, trying to tug her face back. "You're such a sap."

"You have a thing for saps," Ben guessed, distracted while he was trying to focus on her eyes. "I'm just trying to see if there're any differences between you here and you in the real world."

"Are there?" Mal asked sarcastically, relaxing a tad as she gave up her fight.

"I can't see any," Ben hummed, caressing the side of her face and then cupping her cheek. Mal seized his wrists.

"Okay!" She squeaked. "That's enough – enough contact! No more touching!"

Her high-pitched squeak finally ripped him out of his examinations. He smirked and let her go only to grab one of her hands instead. Mal's face turned beet-red. "Mpf!" she exclaimed, trying to tug her fingers away from him. He laughed and yanked her entire frame forward into his grasp, wrapping his arms around her and picking her up off the ground.

"No!" Mal protested, kicking her feet back and forth. "No, no, no! Put me down! Benjamin Florian, put me down right now!"

"You're so small!" Ben cackled. "Mal Bertha, merciless midget extraordinaire."

"Benjamin Florian, if you don't put me down right now then I'll-" she hissed and angled her kicks at his knees. He laughed and dropped, as per her request. She tumbled to the ground with another hiss. Then, hands braced behind her as if she were about to crab-walk away, she bared her teeth with a snarl.

Ben raised his eyebrows and resisted the urge to either burst into laughter or lean down and tickle her sides. "Ferocious," he snorted. "You're almost as mean as your real-life self."

Mal's face twisted in confusion. "Is my real-life self mean?" She asked.

Ben rolled his eyes. There wasn't any infallibility in her acting, but he still didn't believe her. "You try to be. I bet if you let me touch you, you'd probably be just as soft as you are here." He reached for her hair as if he was going to pet her head, but Mal dodged out of his way and hissed at his fingers. He snorted and rolled his eyes.

"So, if I exist in your world, am I a figment of your imagination, or have I just expanded on your purpose in my head?" Mal wondered.

Ben scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous," he commanded. "I know you're the same person you are when we're both awake. Neither of us are conjurations. You know you know me. I don't know why you're pretending."

Mal's face remained blank. A sick, twisting feeling arose in Ben's stomach. She was a very, very good actress.

"Does she know about me?" Mal asked, getting to her feet and brushing herself off. "Like, that you dream with me?"

"Mal," Ben snapped. He had enough headaches when he was awake – he didn't want any in his dreams. "Be quiet."

* * *

All was quiet when he woke up. Light was coming in through a half-open window. The fog was gone from his head.

Ben sat up slowly, testing his strength, and found more food had been left for him on the nightstand. He ate slowly, not wanting to overexert himself, and when it all stayed down and his headache didn't worsen, slowly climbed out of the bed. He waited beside it, holding on for balance until his feet got used to standing again and he could let go. Then he pulled the covers straight as best he could. They probably needed to be washed – he couldn't imagine how filthy they must be after he'd been lying there for over four days and the first day being spent with a high fever. Mal had said she didn't live here, and he hoped that meant she wouldn't be needing this bed.

He managed to make it to the bathroom with only two dizzy spells. He shut and locked the door so that he could shower and looked around. The bathroom was gigantic. Maybe only a few square feet smaller than his room at home. At home, they didn't have bathrooms attached to their homes. Three families shared one outside bathroom and they rotated whose turn it was to clean weekly. Ben supposed that here, it was done by minions, servants, or slaves like him.

He couldn't find any clothes but he did find one large, grey bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. His clothes were filthy – they were still the same clothes he'd left home in. Flattened against his stomach was the cloth with the pancakes that he hadn't been able to eat. With a disappointed sigh, Ben turned the stale cakes into the trash but brushed his fingertips over the cloth. This was something from home. Something his mom had given him. He still wanted it. So instead of tossing it out, Ben filled the sink with water, scrubbed it back and forth in his hands a little, and left it to soak.

Someone knocked at the door. "Ben?" Evie called from outside. "Are you in there?"

Ben immediately unlocked the door and offered the blue-haired girl a smile. Behind her, he saw Mal's shoulders fall in relief as she abandoned what he assumed was a search for him beside her bed. "Hi, Evie," he whispered. "I'm right here."

"Are you going to shower?" Evie asked, glancing at the few unbuttoned buttons of his shirt. "We brought you some new clothes."

"Oh?" Ben asked, taking a step forward. Mal snatched a pile off the bed and balled them up to throw to him. He caught them as she turned away flippantly, still incensed over his disappearance.

"Shoes by the door!" She snapped and began to fiddle with things on the desk. Evie exchanged careful looks between the two then nodded and turned away as well. Ben set part of the pile down beside the door – the socks and pants – and unfolded the shirt.

"Woah," He gasped, spreading out the short-sleeved, knit article. "It's blue!"

Mal and Evie both looked over at him in confusion as he held up the article with an increasingly bright smile. "I've never had anything blue before," he confessed. "I've only seen it in books."

"The sky is blue," Mal furrowed her brow. "And so is water."

Ben shrugged sheepishly. "We, uh, have a barrier. And the barrier makes the sky look green. And we don't have blue water."

"There's no lakes or anything inside the barrier, M," Evie reminded Mal as she began peeling back the covers of the bed. "Water only turns blue in large amounts. You have to have a certain amount because then the light is distorted when it enters it. When the light is distorted, color scatters through it and it appears blue."

"Really?" Ben asked, glancing over at her. "Water can be blue? Ours is usually brown or grey."

Evie paused and stared at him, looking very sad. "Yeah, it can be. Maybe one day you'll see a lake or something."

Ben looked down at the shirt in his hands. "Is it this kind of blue?" he asked.

"No," Evie shook her head. "That's a brighter blue. Sometimes the sky is that color."

"Go shower, Ben," Mal reminded him, taking the chair from the desk and shoving it aside. Evie nodded her encouragements, and so Ben turned and shut the door again.

Once inside, he had another revelation. The water here could be controlled by two knobs. One knob made the water come harder and the other made it come hotter. And it was clear, not grey or brown. It made sense since they were in the palace, but it was still an incredible feat.

Ben fiddled carefully until he found the perfect temperature in between 'Cool breeze' and 'standing in the sun'. Another few minutes were devoted to finding that perfect patter between 'soft downfall' and 'being covered with a blanket'.

The pajama pants had a woven pattern printed onto the fleece they were made of. They, too, were blue, but a much darker blue than the shirt. And they had gold boxes on them. He liked gold. Gold looked like sunshine.

Ben found a brush for his hair and rinsed his mouth out with some mouthwash he found on top of the toilet before finally opening the door and stepping back out. Mal was nowhere to be seen. The room smelled vaguely of aerosol when he stepped out. He wrinkled his nose as his headache returned full-force.

Evie had switched the sheets out to be blue and the comforter, which had also been taken away, was now white. Mal was standing on the desk to be tall enough to paint on the wall above the desk. The formerly blank wall was now covered in muted green, grey, and blue streaks with tape blocking off the bottom part of her project on different levels. The space already looked more like hers. He could almost convince himself he was in Mal's – his literal dream girl's – room with that stuff on the wall.

Mal looked over at him as he sat back down on the bed, wrinkling his nose. She nodded her approval at his still-damp hair and new clothes. Ben resisted the urge to fall over in the fumes and twisted his shirt hem in his hands. The blue color was crazy to him.

"What other colors haven't you seen?" Mal asked, drawing a blue streak into her hazy mess.

Ben shrugged. There were certain colors that he knew simply didn't exist much in nature. Orange, pink… but he happened to live in a dry climate where those colors were present in the surrounding rocks. Yellow he knew from the sunlight and flower centers and yes, from the rocks around his home. Green was the barrier and the weeds that grew on the sides of the roads and was often pictured with wide grassy expanses in children's books. Blue… the spines of books, and that was about it. It seemed to be a favorite color of the children outside the barrier, so blue was never sent in with any crayon or marker packages. Purple was another rare color, but Ben had grown up with purple. He had suspected, at first, when Mal first began appearing to him, the reason she had purple hair was because he had wanted to see some splash of that rare color. He would admit to trying to focus on switching her eyes to blue at one point when he was fifteen and feeling particularly miserable. He'd gotten sick of looking at the green of the barrier during the day and then seeing the same shade in his dreams at night.

Ben got up with a little difficulty, as the air was thicker around her, and caught a lock of her hair. Mal whipped around, stealing her hair back as she turned, and shoved him back. "What do you think you're doing?" She demanded.

"Purple," Ben gasped, pausing to cough as he landed back on the bed. "Purple."

Mal's eyes softened, but she kept her arms crossed and stance rigid. "Listen, let's set some boundaries here," she declared. "You do not get to touch me. You do not get to demand things of me. I'm still irritated by the fact you're using my name to address me. I get that being in this space has probably messed with your head, but you're still a prisoner here and the moment I'm sure you won't collapse again, you'll be back with the others."

Ben managed to stop coughing long enough to give her a hurt look. "You know me, Mal," he whispered.

"No, I don't!" Mal snapped. "I don't know what's got you so delusional, but I have no idea who you are outside of your parents."

"I know you know me!" Ben snapped back. "Can – can we open a window?"

Mal snapped her fingers and the two windows on either side of the bed whisked open. Every argument in Ben's throat died.

"How would I know you?" Mal demanded, oblivious to his shock. "How would I know anyone inside of the bubble?"

"You have magic?" Ben cut her off. "I didn't know that about you."

Mal rolled her eyes. "What do you know about me?" she snorted. "You've been here for a little over a week and conscious for about four hours as a whole, not counting that first half-hour, around me. What makes you an expert?"

"Our dreams," Ben told her, getting back to his feet. "Don't lie to me! I know you have them too. That's why you picked me in the marketplace. That's why you're so sensitive about me!"

"Are you mad?" Mal demanded, shoving him back. She looked bewildered and sick. "I picked you because you were strong and pretty – you're a toy for us to mutilate."

"Which is why I'm up here," Ben gestured around him. "Which is why you're taking care of me and trying to keep me alive."

"I didn't realize who you were!" Mal hissed.

"That's a lie," Ben sniffed. "You know me."

"You're delusional, still," Mal drawled. She turned away. "Just go back to bed. You still aren't thinking right."

"You want to believe that," Ben snapped. "You want to believe that this is all just me being insane because if we did have connected dreams – if what you know you saw is real – then there has to be something behind it. Something that connects you to me."

"You want the truth?" Mal snapped, and her tone was so brutal and honest that it made Ben stop and tilt his head. She turned back to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and pushed him down onto the bed. "I had no idea who you were when I picked you," she told him, slow and tone steady. "And if we send your parents the note you died less than a month after taking you, then the bubble folk will start suspecting outright murder and it'll make the entire process that much harder. You got put here because Maleficent doesn't want prisoners in the medical ward while other patrons are there. So shut up and stop assuming things about me. I have no idea about any dreams. I never saw you before I paid for you."

"You lie," Ben shook his head, searching out her face for any hint of a give. There wasn't any. She was completely serious and nothing in her tone betrayed a hint of dishonesty. She rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Well, if you choose to keep believing that, then it's your problem," she sighed. She sounded annoyed and exasperated like she just couldn't understand what he was trying to accomplish. Like he was the villain trying to confuse her. "Whatever. Just… keep your weird fantasies to yourself. I don't need to get pulled into them."

She turned away to continue painting. Ben sat still on the edge of the bed. For the first time… he was considering the implications if she didn't know what he was talking about. If her fascination with him at the auctioning had been because of his looks or something. After all, that had been Jay's theory. '

If she didn't know him, then she probably thought he was insane or obsessed with her. Which he might be. After all, how could you dream about a girl for more than half your life without ever knowing her only to discover she was real? Was it possible he'd seen a photo or something of her and his mind had conjured her up? But he would have had to have multiple photos… she had grown up beside him and looked exactly like her dream self with the added sense that she was physical.

Was it also possible that maybe… not all of the times that she'd appeared to him, they'd been communicating? Maybe she'd had a dream or two of him when she was younger, forgotten him after a while, and had only taken an interest in him because he was familiar?

Ben scooted back onto the bed and collapsed back onto the place he'd been resting for the last few days. "Am I still allowed to be here?" He wondered aloud.

"Not for much longer," Mal said in her stone-hard tone over her shoulder. "But for now? Sure." She paused, then turned around to him. "So, you said you'd dreamed of me, yeah?"

"I did," Ben agreed. "Not every night. But we talked. You grew up with me."

"What, was I your favorite wet dream?"

"No, never anything like that," Ben shook his head. Sure, he might have wondered things in the daytime, but never too far and nothing ever surfaced in his dreams. He'd always felt that it was wrong to see people like that. Using their bodies – their images – in ways that they would probably condone just wasn't right. "But I know things about you. I know you skip all your classes except for art."

It'd always hurt him when she'd talk about how much school bored her. He'd have given anything to go to school…

"I know that you shattered your kneecap trying to climb an elephant on your fifth-grade trip but you walked on it for the rest of the day so no one would know what you'd done."

Ben had never seen an elephant. She'd tried to describe one to him, and he'd tried to find one in a book to no avail. They were grey, with big ears, and large, but that was all he knew.

"I know you hated your purple hair in middle school and dyed it bright green instead."

That was the thing that had stopped Ben trying to imagine Mal with blue hair instead of purple. He'd missed the purple so fervently that he'd immediately ceased trying to imagine her with anything else.

Mal blinked at him slowly. She seemed mystified. She walked to the edge of the bed and picked up a water bottle, which she pressed into his hands. He assumed it was because he was because his eyes were drifting closed again as the last remnants of his headache turned into drowsiness and she wanted him to stay up. "So, you know who I am?" She asked softly.

"You're Mal," Ben deadpanned. "You're a smart aleck. You're sarcastic. You're my best friend." His eyes were feeling heavy again. He still wasn't 100% okay. Slowly, he put the water bottle back and laid back down on top of the covers.

"Do you know _who_ I am?" Mal repeated, putting particular emphasis on the word "who". A sense of dread filled Ben. She had to be someone important to be recruiting for Queen Maleficent. He swallowed.

"Does it matter?" he asked.

Mal squinted. "No, it doesn't," she replied and turned away.

Ben reached out for her and managed to touch her elbow before she moved too far away. "Mal!" He called and then leaned to pull her sleeve. "Stay."

"Stay?" Mal sneered. "With you?"

Ben caught her hand and pulled. She resisted, but he kept a tight hold of her fingers until slowly, she sat down beside him on the edge of the bed, looking ridiculously disgusted. It took a lot of effort, but he managed to twist his body enough to lie his head on one of her legs. Then, keeping careful to not touch her in too much of a provocative manner, he started tracing his fingertips in lines up and down the outsides of her legs. Mal shivered and looked like she might jump away. When he didn't do anything else beside tickle little lines on her calves and knees, she relaxed a bit. Then, slowly, her balled fists relaxed onto the sheets beside her hips and she let him rest on top of her. Ben continued drawing tiny patterns up and down her legs.

"Evie might come back soon," Mal whispered. "She's bringing you more clothes."

"Is this just my room now?"

"You kidding? We'll both be murdered if Maleficent finds you here. The clothes are so you can go back to the dungeons."

Ben's hands stilled for a few seconds. He pictured the dark cells with the cold stones and the dripping water. "Okay," he whispered dejectedly. He'd already asked Mal for a lot… he couldn't ask her to put her neck on the line for him.

Ben wanted to stay as long as possible in this soft spot with Mal. He didn't want to have to deal with the violent, snarky side of her when he'd only known the sarcastic, sweet side for so long.

He took her hand again and tugged it close to his mouth before gently pressing kisses against each of her fingerpads. Mal's entire arm was tense as she watched him with her mouth pressed into a straight line. He kissed her palm and she let out a squeak of a chuckle that she immediately covered up with her other hand. Ben looked up at her, wondering if he should take the opportunity to tease her, but instead pressed his mouth even tighter to her palm, kissing the skin of her hand and fingers over and over.

"What are you trying to do?" She wondered aloud, finally. She sounded almost offended or possibly confused as he let his mouth wander and obsess over her calluses.

Ben didn't respond. He only pressed his lips, which were beginning to feel a bit sore, to the lines in her palm for a very long, still minute. If he responded, she might have wanted him to stop. He didn't want to stop. This whole thing felt so fragile and electrifying and real. It was like the moment you dropped a glass – it had already slipped past your fingers and was accelerating towards the floor. All he was waiting for was the shattering sound of invisible splinters soaring in all directions. He was waiting for the inevitable, messy pain.

Ben guided his mouth back and forth on her palms and knuckles and joints. The more he worked his mouth onto her skin, the sorer it felt. The more the muscles in his cheeks ached, the softer her skin became against them. The heat from her legs sank into his neck and as he turned to set his chin against her leg. She smelt like paint and work and that different scent that girls always seem to have that isn't flowery or naturous but still somehow marked them as women.

He took her other hand without releasing the first and treated it much the same way, kissing the hardened skin until his mouth knew every blemish, hard spot, and pore of skin on her hands. In a way, it's like he was just reminding himself, because he's looked at her so often before that there's no way he can't know what her skin is like.

When the fog in his brain became too thick for him to think through, he stopped and nuzzled his face into the side of Mal's leg. He took her hands and set them on top of his head, where the weight eased the hammering headache in his forebrain. A laugh escaped Mal from above him. A real laugh, like she usually gave him in their dreams. She started combing through his hair, playing with the locks, and it felt comforting. He lifted his head to peer at her for a second. Her cheeks still burned with blush and she avoided looking away from the hair atop his head, but she looked more relaxed than she had since he first saw her in the marketplace. With the white walls, the paint on her chin, her back against the headboard and his head buried in her leg, she looked like someone his age for once. Maybe even younger. Not the overbearing, cross dame who'd been snapping at him lately.

He must have been stressing her out; appearing out of nowhere, getting sick, and knowing her as well as he does.

"I like you like this," he murmured against her leg. "I like you calm."

Her fingers only hesitated for a moment before continuing to massage his scalp. He savored every minute. After all, she wouldn't be like this forever.


	5. The Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maleficent tortures Ben.

Evie, Jay, and a boy with black-and-white hair who Ben suspects is named Carlos woke him up briefly when they slammed the door to the room after coming in from school. Backpacks hit the floor with thuds and then Carlos pulled a laptop out of his bag and went to steal the chair at the desk where Mal now stands, finishing her work. Ben kept his eyes closed and breathing steady. Just in case they wanted to talk about him with Mal.

He could feel when someone leaned down on eye level to check him and could feel fingers prop at his ear. "No more infection?" Jay asked, sounding surprised. "Huh. Maybe he'll pull through and then you can have your fun before he dies another way."

"Shut up or get out, Jay," Mal snapped from her place on top of the desk. He heard the sprintz of a spray can follow her words. "Something's wrong with him. He knows too much."

"Well, you kept him in your bedroom this last week instead of-"

"No, he knows about me!" Ben heard the rush of wind as she tossed the can onto the bed near his feet. "I'm not sure how he knows. At first, I thought he was insane. But he knows my name and Evie's name and he says that he and I have been meeting in his dreams."

"Sounds like an obsession."

"No, we're talking before this last week. As in, he knew me before I even picked him off the market. He thinks we've been having conversations in his head since we were twelve." He heard Mal jump off the desk with a thud. "He knows about me shattering my kneecap and dyeing my hair and he even knows that the only class I don't ever skip is art."

"How's that possible?" Carlos asked from the chair as he dragged it further away from the bed and used his toes to spin around in it. Ben listened to the sound of the screw spinning in the chair and tried to focus on keeping his breathing even. "Do you know him?"

"I didn't even know who he was when I bought him," Mal shook her head. "They announced he was the would-be king after I'd painted my symbol on him. I was just bringing him back for my mom because he looked like he'd be easy to break or at least useful in the palace."

"He's the would-be king?" Evie asked, voice high and shaking. "And he knows that you're-"

"He doesn't know who I am," Mal huffed, cutting Evie off. She stomped over to Ben's side. "Is he still…" She examined him carefully. Ben forced himself to keep moving his chest up and down slowly, keeping his eyes shut without squeezing the lids together. "He's still asleep. Keep your voice down."

"We need to get rid of him," Jay decided flatly. "You know we do, Mal. Especially now."

"Jay, I have no idea what's happening – he just appeared!"

"That's not what I'm talking about! Strange boy shows up from the bubble and knows you? Knows everything about you? There's got to be something deeper here – the kid is probably predestined for something like Briar Rose or Else or someone. We need to slit his throat and bury him in a ditch before that gift comes into play at all."

"I-I- We can't do that!" Mal protested.

"Why? Cause he's pretty?" Jay demanded. "Mal, you know how fragile evil reigns are. If something good gets out… any hope at all… everything Maleficent built will crumble. Are you really going to let that happen?"

"That's dramatic, Jay," Evie reprimanded. "Maleficent has her lands put together remarkably well. Sure, the people would like the king back, but so long as not too many of their children die and we can keep taking the hero children…"

"The heroes aren't having children anymore," Mal snapped bitterly. "Maleficent's talking about bringing some of them in to force them into servitude, but everyone's terrified about what will happen if we let them back in. It's easier to keep them all there… they don't inspire hope that way. No rebellion."

"Focus," Carlos snapped. "How does he know you? You never went with Le Feu, did you? Is there any chance he hallucinated you?"

"And knew all those things about me?" Mal snapped. "And he's completely convinced I was there with him! He's positive that I'm denying that I dreamt of him. I can't convince him, and if he happens to blurt it out where someone else hears him-"

"We should get rid of him now!"

"Guys!" Evie snapped and pointed at Ben's body. "He's awake."

Ben moved his hand across the covers, knowing his cover had been blown but that he could still fake having just awoken. He opened his eyes a crack and then glimpsed two piercing green eyes glaring down at him. He blinked up at her once, twice, and then burrowed further into the covers. He didn't say a word as he pretended to head straight back into sleep. Mal pulled the covers tight. He felt her eyes on him for several seconds longer as he began to regulate his breathing again.

"He hasn't remembered everything we've talked about around him the last few days," Mal whispered softly. "He's feeling better now, but there may be a chance he'll pass it off as a weird dream. Don't tell him otherwise. Don't take him anywhere. And for God's sake, don't let anyone hear him talking about me. If a rumor starts…"

"Just kill him, Mal," Jay sighed. "It'll be easier that way. Don't get attached just because he's clean and pretty. Just do it now and get it over with."

"Not yet," Mal denied. "We have to figure out about him first."

* * *

He was left alone for a long while. There wasn't anything for him to do, but there was some food on the nightstand. He ate and then began to tentatively search around for something to do. He opened drawers with great caution – he didn't want to root around Mal's clothes – but the room was drastically underused. All empty drawers with smooth tracks that were devoid of anything save dust.

He finally found a few somethings in the desk drawer. The desk itself was covered in spray paint cans where Mal had been painting on the wall. Ben was amazed to discover a painting of a gigantic palace towering in a city of green and purple-roofed buildings. Ben examined the foggy blue skies around the palace spires. What a talented artist.

In the desk was a pad of paper, two brand-new ballpoint pens, and a bible. Ben picked up the pad of paper and, after straightening out the covers, sat down to doodle. He wasn't nearly as artistically talented, however, so his doodles were comprised of sparse rhyming words and meandering notes on what he'd been feeling for the last few days. On a blank note sheet, he wrote a letter to his mother and father. Maybe when Mal returned, he could convince her to let him send it. He never would have dreamed he'd be able to ask his captor for such a favor but had a feeling Mal would begrudgingly allow it.

Ben had always been a fan of blissful poetry, and so he transcribed a few lines and then recopied the best ones with his nicer handwriting and that was how he passed the time until there was a yell down the hall that made him jump. He put the pad and paper down and walked towards the door moments before it was flung open. Evie, Jay, Carlos, and Mal were all huddled into the doorway. Jay shoved him back and, after everyone was inside, slammed the door.

"Shoes?" Jay demanded.

"Door," Mal snapped, shoving Ben back over to the bed and withdrawing a dirty rag from her back pocket. As she held it up to his face, Ben caught her wrist.

"What's going on?" He asked. Her eyes were wide and her hand shook in his grasp. "Are you in trouble? What's wrong?"

She slapped him. Slapped him so hard his ears rang. "Don't touch me!" She snapped. "Hands down – we're putting this on your face."

Jay appeared with Ben's shoes, which had been cleaned at some point since he'd come here. He knelt and began shoving Ben's feet into the shoes. Mal brought the rag to Ben's face, but her hand was shaking so much she could scarcely control it. Evie budged her aside and took the rag. "I got him," She assured her in a calm voice. "Go calm down. You still have to take him down."

Mal nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. Evie carefully began to smear the rag over Ben's face and neck. Jay finished with Ben's shoes and popped back up. "Should I punch him?" He asked and Ben blanched. "He might have some swelling and a bruise by the time he gets down."

"Let's not take chances," Evie shook her head. "She might notice that it's recent."

"What's going on?" Ben asked. "Where are we going?"

"Guys!" Carlos snapped from the doorway. "We have two minutes."

"Mal!" Evie called, dragging the rag over Ben's nose. It smelled like dirt and motor oil. "Come on!"

Mal reappeared. She looked even more frantic than before as she marched over and she and Jay yanked him up. They both took tight holds of his hands and pinned them to his sides. Mal set an arm on Evie's shoulder as they began to walk away. "Get some stuff," she commanded in a grim tone. "As much as you can!"

Carlos followed them out and down the hall. They practically ran. The palace started nice and orderly and clean, but then slowly things began to fall apart. Chips appeared in the sheetrock. Paintings were ripped and molding. Doors swung from one hinge instead of three and lights flickered ominously.

Mal shoved him into a hall and then Carlos dropped the backpack around his shoulders and withdrew several long chains. Ben gawked at them. "You're not serious!" He sputtered.

Mal gave him a truly apologetic look. "I'm sorry, Ben," she whispered. "You're going to have to wear these for a little while."

"Don't be a sap," Jay demanded, shoving her shoulder. "Just get them on. He's still a prisoner. If he doesn't comply, then you'll barbecue him." He glared at Ben to make sure he got the point. Then he quickly locked shackles around Ben's legs. Mal picked up one for his hands with a deep breath that Ben echoed without a second thought.

He offered her his wrist. She carefully clamped the cold metal around his wrist. As she took her hand away, he caught her fingers and squeezed. "I'm trusting you," he whispered.

"Well, then you're an idiot," Jay snapped, clicking the last one onto his wrist. He yanked on the chains, driving Ben forward, and they continued. Carlos stayed behind this time, vanishing into the shadows.

They rounded a corner and Ben could hear laughter. Laughter and jeering and maniacal screaming. He slowed his steps, but Jay shoved him forward to the large black door at the end of the hallway. Then he forced the chains into Mal's hands and shook her shoulders. "You do what you have to," he snapped. "You take him in and you make sure you get out alive. He _doesn't mean anything_."

"What's going on?" Ben asked. Jay didn't look at him as he turned and stalked off the way they'd come. Ben turned to Mal. "Mal?" he whispered.

Mal was becoming a statue before his eyes. She clutched the chains tightly and stared straight ahead as she raised a hand to knock on the door. "I'm sorry, Ben," she whispered. "Maleficent has requested to see you in person. If anyone asks, you've just come from the Evil Queen's lair."

Ben's blood ran cold. He finally understood – this was out of Mal's hands.

She knocked by banging on the door with the underside of her fist. A green glow overtook the doors before they slammed open. The room on the other side was one of the most horrible that Ben had ever seen. Pitch black walls and grey stone floors that were splattered with old brown and fresh red stains. Maleficent's court was arranged like a performing stage with the Mistress of all Evil standing in the center of the room, laughing as she turned to see her latest toy enter. Slumped against the wall of the colosseum-like setup was another person's body. Ben couldn't' tell if they were alive or not. Maybe they had come from the heroes – from the bubble – but he didn't recognize them. The stands behind the barrier walls were filled with villains. Some of them he recognized. Gaston and Le Feu sneered while Mother Gothel and Hans looked on in interest. Behind everyone hung bloodied weapons of war. Ben spotted a chipped war ax and felt like throwing up.

Well, what a spectacular way to die. Led to death by the girl of his dreams.

Mal stepped forward and pulled him in behind her. The smell of metal and sweat was so overpowering Ben wanted to throw up. Mal pushed him into the center of the room, letting out a maniacal laugh of her own before passing his chains to Maleficent. "Here he is!" she laughed. "As promised. The would-be King of Auradon."

The courts burst into laughter as Ben closed his eyes and dipped his head to the ground. He heard the shake of chains before he suddenly found himself on his knees in front of Maleficent with his knees stinging. He looked up long enough to watch Mal lean back with a nonchalant, amused smile at the show. Traitor.

Maleficent took his chin in much the same way that Mal had when examining him that first day and laughed so that spit flew into his eyes. "He looks just like his father!" She announced. "How fortunate! You picked a good one, Mallie."

Mal straightened up and smiled even broader. "He's a fun one," she promised, though she had no way of knowing that. "He's especially handsome when he's begging for mercy. So leave me some leftovers to play with." She ran a hand through his hair and it would have been comforting if Ben couldn't feel the scratch of her nails all along his scalp.

He knew her. He knew she didn't like this. But that was a different Mal. A Mal who knew him. A Mal who liked pretty rocks and sarcasm and not _this_.

He'd been wrong about her.

Mal curled her fingers in his locks and he took a sharp breath, screwing his eyes shut at the pain. "Promise me you'll leave him alive for me?" She asked the Queen of the Land. "I'd hate to lose my latest playmate."

"He'll be intact," Maleficent promised, releasing Ben's chin. "I can have my fun without killing him." She reached over and curled her fingertips down Mal's face in an act so intimate that Ben blanched away from it. "You did good, pumpkin," she cooed, and the waved her fingers to dismiss Mal. Mal turned and walked over to where Maleficent's legendary obsidian throne stood against the wall. Beside it was a smaller, silver throne of platinum. And there she sat, beside Maleficent's throne, with no crown on her head and no one else remotely close to the throne.

Oh.

Mal. Mal. Maleficent.

It took a moment for that information to sink in. Mal was the daughter of the High Queen. The same place Ben would be if his parents had managed to create Auradon.

And she didn't know him.

The details were a bit foggy until Maleficent's laughter brought him back to earth and he found out that, while he'd been staring at Mal and processing this new information about his childhood companion, the chains girding his arms had been strapped to the ceiling and his feet wrapped around iron stays on the floor. Ben looked around the crowd. Beside a man with a colorful red parrot sitting on his shoulder was Jay, stone-faced and arms crossed. Carlos sat beside a woman with curly black and white hair with dalmatian pelts covering her shoulders. Evie was nowhere to be seen, but Ben glimpsed a few empty seats here and there.

Maleficent took his face in a passionate manner than had him leaning back and gasping for breath. "You would have my throne, wouldn't you?" She cackled. "You would want the villains locked away, just like your parents? Just like how we locked you away?"

Never. Not now. No.

Ben took his eyes off Maleficent and cast them over to Mal, who was examining her nails as if bored. Intense anger flared through him. "Look at me," he demanded without a single word as hot tears stung his eyes. If he could communicate with her through dreams, there wasn't any reason he shouldn't be able to talk to her while awake.

Mal didn't look over. Because she didn't have his connection. She couldn't hear his thoughts.

Still, he repeated the mantra. "Look at me."

Maybe it was chance. Maybe it was because Maleficent had done something beside him that drew her attention. But either way, Mal glanced up and their eyes locked. He grabbed the chains that were binding his wrists for extra strength, straightened as best he could, and held her gaze.

The first blow fell. A heavy crack that forced a gasp out of his chest. He would have fallen forward if he could have. As it was, his spine absorbed most of the blow as Ben forced Mal to hold his gaze.

It was some sort of multi-stringed weapon that sliced the shirt Evie had given him open and left blood dripping on the floor. He could hear Maleficent's voice, but couldn't make out what she was saying. All he was focusing on was Mal's green eyes as she looked on the show.

A second blow fell. Then another. Good, old-fashioned whipping. At four, he was hanging by his wrists. He wondered how long until he passed out. If he would be allowed to pass out.

Maleficent quit after ten when Ben was already seeing stars, and Ben released Mal's gaze to close his eyes a moment. Maleficent was still screaming at him. He wasn't sure she was expecting a response or not. He caught things about his parents – his dad in particular – that probably would have stung a lot more if he was coherent.

Someone moved on the side of the room and Ben almost had a heart attack when he saw Chad step out of the shadows. His old friend was much, much thinner than Ben was, with grey patches on his hands and face as he reached for Ben's shoes(he assumed at Maleficent's order) and tugged both him and his sock off. Someone lifted a bloodied knife off the wall in the back and Ben turned to find Mal again. She had looked away and was hiding her face in the shadows, staring towards where Jay was shaking his head at her in the crowds.

_Look at me._

She didn't glance over. Maleficent took the knife and brandished it into the air. She seemed drunk as she teetered around the circle, laughing her head off with her eyes clouded over in insanity.

_Look at me._

Maleficent almost tripped on her way to Ben as she waved the knife. One missed slice and he'd be bleeding out.

_Look at me._

Mal finally glanced over and he hardened his gaze as she froze beneath his eyes. It was probably inevitable that he would have ended up here at some point. From the moment this demented system had begun, it was inevitable that Maleficent would want to meet – and torture – the child of the people who'd conspired against her. And it was not Mal's fault that he was here now. If anything, she'd probably delayed the inevitable. He shouldn't be holding this against her.

But it was rather hard to convince himself of that when Maleficent bent down and chopped one of his toes clean off.

Don'tyelldontyell.

Ben squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the burning, stinging wounds in his back as Maleficent cut through the bones to free his pinkie toes from both feet. He clenched his hands, knowing they'd probably be next.

It wasn't though. Maleficent wiped the blood off her knife using his foot and then cut the remnants of his shirt off. The back, which had been cut into ribbons by the whip, had dried a little. When Maleficent yanked it away, she pulled away skin with it. Ben hissed in pain. Again, he sought out Mal's cold, dead eyes. Her cheeks were devoid of color as he searched her blind gaze for any ounce of comfort.

Maleficent sliced a thin line across his chest that wasn't even deep enough to draw blood before handing the knife to Chad and kicking his severed toes away on the floor. Ben saw Mal flinch away. He was so distracted by her trying to distract herself that he missed the motion where Maleficent dug her fingernails into the cuts she'd just made. Then she pulled and he yelled.

Sheets of what looked like leathery parchment paper were ripped straight off his chest with a sound like Velcro being ripped apart. She waved her hands back and forth twice. Ben thought she might be flaunting the skin, but no. It had gotten stuck underneath her nails. Oh, he was going to be sick.

Mal kept her arms crossed as she examined the ground. Part of Ben wanted to yell for her. Part of him never wanted to see her again. Oh, goodness, couldn't she just _look_ at him?

She lifted her eyes as Ben felt his world catch fire. Literally. Maleficent had summoned a torrent of green flames at his bleeding feet. He screamed.

He was going to die here. Mal's mother was going to murder him. This was it.

The flames suddenly went out, and Ben took a literal sigh of relief as cool air brushed past his blackened skin. He looked over at Maleficent to see what was next, but then Mal began to speak from the head of the throne room.

"Mom?" She called, sounding annoyed and reprimanding. "Don't forget – I want him alive. If the shock kills him, I'll still be upset."

Maleficent gave a little smile as the rest of the court jeered and laughed at Ben. "Of course, darling!" she exclaimed, drawing a finger down Ben's chest and making him writhe a little more. "You know, he's not as much fun as you claimed. Too stubborn." She dug her nails into Ben's thin skin and drew blood as she raked them down his chest. Ben let out a few loud gasps that were padded by sobs. He hadn't noticed that his face was wet.

Mal shrugged. "Maybe he's getting used to me," she mourned, getting off her throne and wandering over to her mother. Maleficent released Ben as Mal – his owner – drew closer. She took his face in a false caress. "A few days alone should fix it. Right, Benny-boo?"

That nickname set off all sorts of alarm bells in his head. He pulled his head away from her hands. The last thing he wanted was for Mal to touch him right now. At the same time, the only place he wanted to be was in her arms with her fingers going through his hair.

The chains were dropped. Ben shouted as his feet hit the ground. Maleficent kicked his side without a care. "He's quite lucky he looks the way he does," she hummed. "Most of his friends don't leave this intact."

Mal didn't comment as she walked on past Ben, leaving him on the bloody stone floor, trying to keep conscious as Chad appeared, looking green, to pick off the two toes that Maleficent had cut off and put them into a basket hanging by the door. Ben could see a partially molding full arm before two people picked him up by the shoulders and began to drag him away. One of them was Jay. He didn't know the other but assumed they must be another villain child of relative importance. Mal left the room behind her mother as everyone else began to vacate the premises. Jay and the other villain kid dragged Ben out. He cried out as his feet caught and banged against stones. They took him down the hall and around a bend before Jay dismissed the other and pulled Ben into his arms. One more corner and Mal appeared. She swayed in and out of his vision as she ran a hand down Ben's cheek, examining his eyes.

"Shock," she told Jay and her voice sounded far away. "We have to get him to Evie."

"You've gone soft," Jay reprimanded. "What you did with your mom was risky. We ought to ditch him now."

"Evie," Mal repeated, even firmer. She cupped Ben's cheek and lit her eyes up, trying to keep his focus. "Ben? Ben? Can you hear me?"

Ben wrestled his pinned hands to put one over Mal's. She almost pulled away, but he seized her fingers. His wrists and arms were sore and stretched. He pulled her on her hand and twisted his neck carefully until he was able to press a kiss to the middle of her palm. His stomach twisted. Her eyes filled with tears.

* * *

There were no dreams.


	6. The Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is back to trying to recover.

When he woke up, his head was on Mal's lap. Her fingers were knit into his hair and she was crying softly. He couldn't hear much besides the occasional sniffle, but he could feel her chest shaking and felt his hair move with each tortured breath. He traced his fingertips up and down the outsides of her legs to alert her to his wakefulness and then kissed her knee carefully.

"Are you okay?" he whispered.

He listened to her consider the question. Finally, she shook her head. "I'll be okay," she promised. "I… I understand if you hate me."

Did he? Ben's fingers trembled a little on her leg. "It was probably inevitable she'd want to see me," he whispered. "At least I was given to someone who didn't let her kill me right off the bat."

Mal gave a dry, heartless chuckle as he buried his cheek into her leg. "Are you… in any pain?" she whispered.

Ben blinked at the question, remembering his burned feet and mutilated toes. He suddenly realized he couldn't move his legs and pushed his body up to stare at his lower body. His legs were still there, bandaged white, but he couldn't move them. "What'd you do?" he asked curiously.

"I-I just…" Mal shrugged. "We didn't want you to be in pain."

"Well, what did you do?" Ben asked, lying down on her again. He had the urge to wrap his arms around her legs like he would a pillow but felt that would be 'saying' a bit too much. Mal brushed all his hair to one side as she examined the texture of it carefully.

"Just a spell," she whispered. "Just a spell to remove the pain. We used to use it when we were younger."

"Ah," Ben nodded. "Yeah. You used to get hurt a lot."

Mal pushed her hands across his forehead as if she were slicking his hair back. "I did. Yeah. But apparently, you already know all that."

Ben looked up at her. There was this look on her face as if she were trying to learn everything about him. Not the way he looked, but just the way he was. As if she didn't already know every feature.

"I never thought you were real," he whispered. "Because I'd never seen purple on hair and because you weren't as nice as everyone around me. You got nicer, but I always thought you were just someone my mind created."

Mal stopped playing with his hair and played with the ends of her own. She didn't say anything though, and that led Ben to keep going.

"I used to try and turn your hair blue. Because I'd never seen blue before. Only in some books."

At that, Mal burst into laughter and leaned her head back against the headboard. Her hands buried themselves in his hair again. He wished he'd thought to have his mom cut it before he left because now it was too long. But she seemed to like it, so that was that.

"I guess that means you like Evie," Mal mused. "Maybe I'll consider dying my hair blue on a whim one day. Purple is my natural color, but hey, it's always fun to have sporadic changes."

Ben shook his head and reached up to twirl the ends of her hair. She withdrew, then apparently realized that if she was going to play with his hair, she should at least let him touch hers. He took the ends of hers and turned them around in his fingertips. "I like your hair," he whispered. "I was just being spoiled and ungrateful."

"Ungrateful? For my hair color?"

"For just… you. All of you. The culmination of you."

"You're a sa – poet."

Ben shrugged and let go of her hair. He made to lay back down, but he'd moved up enough that he was now lying on her stomach, not her legs. He paused, examining her carefully to see if she'd be comfortable with the new position, and when she didn't protest, closed his eyes to focus on the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

"If I were a crayon, I would be blue, the rarest of all while stretching across the horizon. Untouchable while never out of sight."

The words were beautiful, but that wasn't the reason Ben pulled his head back off of hers and looked up at her. "I wrote that," he told her. "How do you know it?"

"You left your poetry on the bed before we left," Mal blushed. An actual blush that made Ben's mouth fall open. "I walked in and Carlos and Evie were reading it aloud while watching you. I should have known that you would be a poet."

"That one wasn't even one of my best," Ben shook his head. "It was just ramblings because I'm obsessed with blue."

Mal pulled her legs out from under him and swung them off the bed. "Look down," she recommended as she got up. Ben did, noted the blue pajama pants with a thrill of excitement, then watched her pull a little stack of notebook leaflets off the desk. She cleared her throat. "I fought an endless rebellion against death until I discovered you wrestling at my side. Now, I fight for life, and your absence is my only night."

She glanced over and examined him like she was seeing him for the first time. "Do you just think this up?" She asked.

Ben shrugged.

"It's not about sweat or tears or words; fighting, tearing, sweet remarks. Love should not be made with swords; and things you hate shouldn't leave marks."

"Do you agree?" Ben asked, trying to deny the anxiety entrance into his throat.

"Love should not be made with swords?" Mal repeated in a cheeky, amused tone. "That might be the sappiest thing I've ever read."

"So, you like it?" Ben asked.

Mal only rolled her eyes and shuffled papers around in her hands until her expression solemnized and she leaned up with a leaflet in her hands. "Your body is cloaked with my imprints; sketched out over your soul. Colorful hair dropping over my shoulder; a beautiful battle to become whole. There's no barrier of ambiguity in the depth of our pains. Throw your passion on my skin and let me trace my temper through your veins. I want to see the way you wish for me. Something deeper than feelings; more meaningful than homely. We color ourselves without explanation before anyone can see the marks on my heart. Our love is more than a random connection – more than the prints we leave when we part."

"You are a sap," Ben nodded, hiding a smile behind his fingerprints. "You like sappy, romantic things."

"As if," Mal snorted. She sat back down on the bed and handed Ben the pages of his work. He looked over the longest one – the poem she'd read aloud – with pride. He could see smudges of dirty fingerprints on the edges of the paper and was proud that they'd been liked. "Still, they're good. I'm surprised people who think like you still exist."

Ben shrugged. "My mother liked poetry. And she liked to read things out of the bible, so I know lots of fancy words."

"Belle," Mal nodded as if that made sense. Ben looked up.

"And Maleficent," he said in a rather pointed tone. Mal's face fell. "You never told me who you were."

"You never told me either?" Mal raised an eyebrow. "You're not entitled to knowledge about me."

"I was announced," Ben's mouth twisted at the corners. "Unless you're admitting now that you really do know me?"

Mal's expression turned from regretful to annoyed. She huffed. "Whatever, Prince Benjamin," she scoffed.

"Did someone tell you that Benjamin was my full name?"

"I assumed."

"Sure."

Mal twiddled her thumbs around each other with a deep breath to keep her calm. "I… do wish there was a way to dissuade my mom. She, uh, hasn't been the same since my father left her."

Ben hummed. "I didn't know Maleficent had a husband," he admitted. "Much less a daughter."

"She didn't technically have a husband," Mal shrugged. "She had a lover who she tortured just as much as everyone else now. But he got sick of the abuse, and so he left."

"I'm confused," Ben furrowed his brow. "Was he a prisoner?"

Mal shook her head and a blush sank into her cheeks. "No, no. He was just immortal and… well, this is weird, but I think he had a bit of a damsel streak. He liked being tied up and everything. But Mom had me, and she didn't like how… careful he was with me. She wanted me to be tough and he wanted to coddle me. So, whenever she saw him being gentle, she made sure to follow it up by knocking me around. And he left not long after that."

Ben exhaled. There was a lot of information there. "Were you okay?" He asked.

Mal gave him a weird look. "I don't really get attached to people," she replied, straightening her spine with a sniff.

Ben elbowed her with a snort. "For sure. Just prisoners from families that you know of from old stories. But, uh, that wasn't what I was asking. I was talking about… did she beat you after he left?"

Mal deadpanned. Her face looked a little green, which was odd against her purple hair. "She beats everyone, Ben. And I'm stronger because of it." She showed him her calloused hands. "I know some people think I'm broken because my mom hit me, but they really couldn't be further from the truth." An evil smirk lit up Mal's face and that blazing green color came back into her eyes. If Ben had been standing up, his knees would have gone weak. "Her plans worked. I am strong. Stronger than she thinks. Stronger than she is."

"If you're that strong, why aren't you in control?" Ben asked. "What's your role around here anyways? No one seems to talk much about you."

The light dimmed. Mal looked annoyed. She shook her head. "I don't want to explain it." She decided. "You don't need to know. I don't want to be lectured."

Ben sighed and looked down at his poems to shuffle them through. The stack felt much thinner than it had looked when he'd made it. And that's when it occurred to him that it was, in fact, thinner.

"Where's my letter?" he asked.

"Letter?" Mal asked, letting a look of calm pass over her face.

"To my parents."

"Parents?"

"Belle and Adam."

"Ah, them."

Ben waited. "Did you throw it out?" he demanded.

Mal shrugged. "Sort of," she hummed.

Ben stared at her. For a few seconds, he was too dumbfounded and angry to speak. Then he caught a spark of something in her eyes and leaned in closer to examine it. "You sent it, didn't you?" He asked.

Mal snorted. "You think I can send things to the bubble, Ben? That's flattering."

"I didn't get the chance to finish it."

At this, she dropped her front and sighed. "I signed it for you," she promised. "Carlos wanted to try out an invention of his, so we used your letter. No way to know if it reached them or not."

"Thank you," Ben smiled. "That's very kind of you."

Mal snapped away from him and looked as if he'd just spat at her. "Kind?" She repeated. "Did Maleficent hit your head while she was torturing you?"

"You are kind." Ben furrowed his brow up. "I'm not just saying that. I think that."

"It's amazing how you think you're the expert on me," Mal scoffed. "You think I'm kind and a romantic squish. You know how many people would laugh you off your soapbox?"

"You do like romance," Ben protested. "You like to be charmed. That's why, out of all the poems here I wrote about what's going on and what I think about the world and everything, you gravitated towards the few about you. Because you wanted me to talk about them. You wanted me to talk about you."

Mal was so surprised she sat back down and gaped for a few seconds. "I – I just thought they were the silliest…" She trailed off. "You wrote those about me?"

"Colorful hair dropping over my shoulder?" Ben prompted. Mal's face flushed.

"I knew I was just a good dream to you," She spat out.

"I was describing a hug."

"That's a convenient cover-up."

"Similar to you knowing my full name."

Mal shook her head stubbornly, staring at the wall. Her fists balled up against her legs. The tips of her ears were red. "Ben?" she sighed, digging her nails into her palms. "When are you going to accept that I have no idea who you are?"

Some sort of invisible demon with an icy grip wrapped its frigid fingers around Ben's heart. "I know you know me," he replied nonetheless and didn't bother to respond when Mal rolled her eyes and huffed in exasperation.

* * *

"We have to be careful," Carlos announced as he and Evie looked over Ben's burned feet. "If we do too much, Maleficent may catch wind of how quickly he healed."

"We've still got to be careful of how much we're suddenly using this room," Evie nodded. "And what we're bringing in."

Jay sits in a chair beside the bed, turning a jewel over in his hand. Ben hasn't heard the other man complain about how much care they're giving Ben for a while but suspects his feelings haven't changed.

Evie coats Ben's charred feet with a balm. Ben can't feel a thing. Mal's magic is still numbing all the pain. "So, Ben," she begins with a silken voice that reminds Ben of his mother reading poetry. "I've been wanting to ask you for a long time what you meant by Mal not yelling as much in her dreams."

"I met her in my dreams before I came here," Ben explained. All three look up with skepticism. "I didn't know she was real until I came here, but now I'm sure she knows me too."

"That's quite the claim," Carlos hummed. "Why?"

"Because she knew my name before I told her," Ben said. "And we had this inside joke… she said that I probably had a goldfish so we'd always joke about it dying. She reacted to it when I mentioned it."

"I think that was just the confusion," Jay shook his head. "Listen, man, we've been with her for a long time. I don't remember it, but my dad says I was right there when she was born. And she's never mentioned a reoccurring guy from the bubble in her dreams. I wouldn't read into your dreams too much."

Ben shook his head. "I think she knows me," he said. "I know her faces."

"You know a dream," Evie pointed out. "He's right, Ben. I don't think Mal knew who you are. She usually picks people for her mom… she probably was just trying to find someone and happened to land on you."

"She sought me out," Ben shook his head. "And right afterward, she saved one of my friends."

"Ah, the Aurora girl," Jay nodded. "Yeah. She's been helping out at my dad's shop. Cried a lot at first. Dad almost threw her out." He slipped the gem back into his pocket. "Listen, Ben, has it occurred to you that she sought you out because, and I say this as a mostly-straight male, you look good and you weren't whining? Because everyone else on the block was crying for their mommies and you looked bored."

Ben shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "I think she knows me."

All three exchanged sighs. It seemed that they, too, had given up on arguing with him.

* * *

"We're going to be moving you out of here as soon as your feet heal," Mal announced, dropping a full backpack onto the desk. "Evie and Carlos say most of your skin should have recovered by next week. You'll have to be careful on your back, but there's only so much time I can pull the EQ excuse on my mom."

Ben pulled out the desk chair for her and she plopped down. He'd been sitting on the foot of the bed, resting. He couldn't move around much, but any new place was better than being stuck in the same bed he'd been in for almost three weeks. "How much longer?" He asked.

"Hopefully not long," Mal pinched the bridge of her nose. "If she gets suspicious, then all five of our heads will be on the block."

"Why do Evie, Jay, and Carlos stick around, if they could get in so much trouble?"

"Loyalty. Could you be quiet, please?"

Mal forced her eyes back open and began to unload her stuff onto the desk. Ben realized it was mounds of homework. Books with dozens of papers stuffed into the spines, worksheets stapled together, the whole lot. He'd never seen homework before. How interesting.

He leaned forward and dropped his chin onto Mal's shoulder as she dug for a pencil or pen. She made a weird face at him and started to draw away before he whispered in her ear: "I don't want to go back to the cells."

Mal's hands stilled. He could feel her labored breathing underneath him. "Well," she choked. "I'm afraid you'll have to go. You need to blend in with everyone else as much as possible."

"Mal," Ben whispered, turning his head so his lips brushed her ear. "Please don't make me."

Mal shoved the backpack aside and ran her hands through her hair in defeat before shoving the closest pile further away from her. "I'm beat," she announced. "I'll figure out that… mess tomorrow." Ben watched her climb to her feet and stalk towards the window. She ripped it open and jumped up, swinging her feet out. He wasn't surprised – Mal and Jay both had excellent climbing abilities.

"Mal?" He asked before she could swing away and start heading home – to her real home. "Goodnight."

Mal rolled her eyes and huffed before shutting the window and climbing down out of sight. Ben waited until he saw a glimpse of green light on the grounds below and then returned to sit at the desk. He had to be careful of his feet as he hobbled. At the top of a stack was the outline of an essay she was supposed to write. A pencil had clattered to the floor. He picked it up, started doodling, and then found himself pouring over the details of the assignment.

Mal was so lucky she got to deal with all of this. Ben had never even seen a school before, and he'd never had any homework besides the challenges his mom assigned.

Surely she wouldn't mind if he took over a few things, would she?

* * *

"Claude Frollo said my last assignment was really good."

Ben looked up from the bible, which he'd finally pulled out to locate a few of his mother's favorite verses, as Mal dropped her backpack onto the ground. "Is that our way of saying thank-you, or your way of saying 'I know what you did'?" he asked.

"Thanks," Mal bit out like the word was hard for her to say. Ben snorted. "You're welcome," he said. "I never had school or homework back in the bubble. It looks kinda cool."

"You're insane."

"If I am, it's your mom's fault."

Mal sat down on the desk and peered down over the top of the book at where he was. "The song of Solomon?" She asked. "What's it about?"

"Basically Bible smut."

"No, really, what is it?"

"I wasn't kidding. The Song of Solomon celebrates love, not awakening love until it's ready, and is this heated conversation between two lovers." Ben shut the book. "And for the record, I wasn't reading the Song of Solomon. Because it's biblical trash and my parents and I share a mutual hatred for the section. The only reason it's included in the bible is for historical reasons. I was reading the last chapter of Ecclesiastes."

"Ah, is that the foreplay to the Song of Solomon?" Mal kicked her feet against the bed as she raised her eyebrows at Ben.

"It was written by a completely different author who likely had no idea he'd get put in front of the most doctrinally useless book in the bible," Ben slurred as he rolled his eyes. "Nah. Ecclesiastes talks about knowledge and wisdom, opposition in all things, and death."

Mal recoiled from him with her lips twisting downwards. "You are not going to die," She shook her head. "Listen, if Jay's been talking crap while I've been gone, I want you to ignore it. I'm not going to let Maleficent-"

"I'm not concerned with it," Ben cut her off. "And for the record, it's not like you can keep me for years and years if the other villain kids don't survive as long. People will start to talk." He cracked the book back open and then found the page he'd been on. "And I wasn't focusing on my own death. I was just thinking of my mom. She has a theory on what happens after we die."

Mal hummed and hopped off the desk. Ben kept talking. "The dust shall return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. She thinks that there's a difference between the two parts that make up us. One is carnal and one isn't. But they're trying to work together here. That's why we have drives to do what's wrong, but our heads tell us to resist."

He stopped then and paused to see if Mal was paying attention. She was still listening, but it was clear she didn't have all that much interest in the subject. He sighed and closed the book again. "Anyways," he trailed off and then glanced at her schoolbag. "Can I look through your stuff from school?"

Mal picked it up, brought it over, and plopped it on the desk. Ben immediately started pulling things out. "I've been thinking," she sighed, turning away so he couldn't see her face. "Maybe… I mean… Mom probably wouldn't have as big a problem with me keeping you closer to me if I made it sound like you were my…" She trailed off.

Ben paused as he opened her literacy book and then glanced at her back. "Your what?" He asked.

He could feel her blush through her back. "A toy," she replied. "If you were my toy."

"You mean a lover," Ben realized, and color crept into his neck. "You wouldn't really…"

"No," Mal shook her head. "But it'd be a good excuse to keep you away from everyone else. Cleaner. I could put you in one of the servant's rooms down the hall… I can't do a big room like this but-"

"I'm used to small rooms," Ben blushed. "Would… would I have to come down here to keep up the lie? Like, at night?"

"I usually don't sleep here," Mal shook her head. "You know that. I just come to the courts during the day and do my own thing unless Mom wants help. It wouldn't be hard to make it seem like you're being used. And, uh, I could say other things too. Mom wouldn't care if someone did most of my work for example." She nodded at the open book in his hands. "You don't have to do it all, of course, but-"

She coughed then and her face turned purple. "I don't know why I'm offering you the choice," she laughed. "I mean, technically I could just make you do all my work. Most of my stuff never gets done anyway and the teachers can't do anything about it. It just feels weird to, like, boss you around."

"I wouldn't mind," Ben shook his head. He didn't know what the alternative was, but so far homework and hanging out with Mal didn't seem like a hard deal. "What else?"

Mal shrugged again. She seemed very uncomfortable. "Evie, Jay, and Carlos would probably make you do stuff too," she whispered. "And the others, if they see you. Just… try and stay away from them."

Ben nodded. "Okay," he whispered. "I can handle that."

Mal nodded, and that was that.


	7. The Shop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben gets to leave the palace.

Ben started to learn more about the palace then, as he had to go from place to place. He still couldn't move as quickly while his back and feet recovered, but he was able to go places, carrying papers back and forth. It was interesting because before, he'd seen the maniacal side of Maleficent. Now, he was seeing the business side. The side that examined which area of her kingdom needed which resources and allocated as such. He was often summoned to bring her food, supplies, or to take away her finished work. He wasn't allowed to look at it, but Mal was, and so he'd often get caught up on it anyways. Agrabah needed hard lumber and Arendelle needed rock. Villeneuve, which Ben knew as his mom's old home, also needed rocks to build a larger winepress.

His room was three down from Mal's and two away from Jay's, which was in the next hall over. Carlos and Evie also had rooms in the vicinity, but none of the Core Four tended to stay there often. Jay had to help out with his dad's shop, Evie was heavily involved in the courts with her mother, and Carlos tended to escape everyone and build inventions all by himself. Mal… he didn't know where she went to. Sometimes she was needed in the courts alongside her mom. Sometimes she went to her classes at school(usually to bring him stuff back). But most of the time she was gone and he had no idea where.

Ben saw other servants here and there, but none that he knew and only two former inmates of the Bubble, which by now he had figured out was slang for the prison where all the heroes were kept.

"Ben," Carlos announced one day, opening up the door to his room without a greeting or anything. Ben was sitting on his bed and pouring over the things Mal had let him steal from her backpack(She was careful now, not letting him see certain notebooks or her sketchpad), so it's not a big deal when Carlos drops a mesh of wires and metal plating onto his bed and kicks the door shut. "I need you to do something important."

"Yeah?" Ben asked, sitting forward. He can't lean very well yet, with his back, but if he shifted his weight then his purpose can still be accomplished.

Carlos pointed to a clean slot on the side of his machine that was a place for something to be plugged in. "I need a specific connector to make this work," he whispered in a low tone. "And I need you to get it for me. But you can't tell anyone."

"What's it for?" Ben asked.

Carlos shook his head. "I can't tell you that," he whispered. "But I'm going to draw a picture and you're going to go down to Jafar's shop and see if he has it. I can't be seen with something like this, but if you are, then it won't matter. They'll just assume it's for something in the palace." He took Ben's pencil out of his hand and then grabbed a paper.

Ben watched Carlos detail the inscription that should be on the cord, the type of inserts it'll have, and everything else about it. Then he handed it over and Ben tucked it into his pocket before getting up carefully. "Do you know when Mal will be back? I wanted to try and finish this before then so she doesn't have to double around in the morning."

Carlos stared at the ground. "She's with her mom now," he confided. "It'll be a while. She should be out before midnight."

Something about that statement and the way it was said made Ben's knees quake. Mal was often with her mother when Maleficent went over things for the kingdom. She often supervised when Maleficent's sanity fell through and she pulled all her advisors to the old throne room to torture someone she was annoyed with. But this somehow felt different. He just wasn't sure how.

Still, he took the paper and kept his hand over it in his pocket as he stumbled down the halls and out toward where guards were. Carlos gave him a list of instructions and a stack of bills before he left about where to go and how to act and how long to take. One of the guards, upon hearing Ben had been sent for a personal, undisclosable request, was assigned to walk him to Jafar's shop. This wasn't a problem, even when the guards whispered their suspicions about him under their breaths.

Mal hadn't needed to lay the rumor down about the way she'd supposedly been abusing him. She announced he'd be down the hall from her and after declaring to the courts that he was hers, everyone "put two and two together". It's been somewhat exhilarating and humiliating and haunting to hear the whispers that follow him wherever he goes. People seem to think he must bend to her will easily.

They opened the heavy doors and let down the drawbridge to the castle. And then the light was blinding. Ben squinted. He held a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. He stumbled over a rock with his numb feet. And then he glimpsed something breathtaking behind his fingertips.

The sky really was blue.

"Woah," he gasped, stopping in the center of the drawbridge as the horizon opened up before him. There were wispy white clouds here and there, but for the first time in his life he was looking up at an endless expanse of blue.

"You never seen a sky before, kid?" The guard snapped, ushering him forward.

"The sky inside the barrier is green," Ben mumbled as he walked forward. "I can't believe this much blue exists!"

The guard looked down with a frown like that wasn't an answer he liked and then pointed ahead. "Look there," he directed.

Ben did but wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to see. The castle was set on a hill, so he could see out over the tops of the houses and out toward where the land suddenly… ended. And then there was more blue, but a deeper color. And it looked like it might be moving. "What is that?" He asked. "Where did the land go?"

Was it alive?

"It's the ocean," the guard explained. "Can you smell the salt?"

He could. He could taste it too. And when he opened his hand in the air, it felt a little moist from all the water in the air. When he breathed in, he could taste salty water. The air inside the Bubble didn't have water in it like this.

The guard led him down the concrete path until the streets suddenly became cobbled. Ben stepped onto the stones, openmouthed, and then couldn't resist leaning down to brush his fingers against the path. A childish laugh escaped him. "I didn't think roads existed like this outside of books!" He laughed.

The guard was beginning to look sad. He walked behind Ben as Ben gawked at the shop signs hanging above painted doors with tiled roofs in many colors that reminded him of home. Reds and oranges and deep pinks. Most people spoke English, but Ben could hear some people speaking French as he walked by. "Is this Villeneuve?" He asked the guard as they walked past a bakery.

The guard nodded. He didn't say anything about Belle. Ben wondered if he was allowed to.

They finally crossed Jafar's shop, which was set up in a covered courtyard so that you could peer in and see things. It was basically a giant warehouse. An Arabian boy was behind the desk and it was him who Ben asked for help. He said he couldn't leave the desk, but that Ben could look around the front of the store while he called for someone who could help.

Ben bent down and examined lines and lines of jewelry hanging from curved hooks. One was a purple gemstone hanging from a long cord. It might have looked nice on Mal, but Mal didn't like much jewelry. He also found a gold ring with a beast on it that fit perfectly onto his right ring finger.

The guard cleared his throat. "Listen, kid," he began in a low, uncomfortable whisper. "I'm technically not supposed to do this, but you see that shop over there?" He nodded across the street to an open café. "I like their coffee and the lady behind the counter is an old… friend of mine. If you don't say a word about me leaving you here, then I'll get that ring for you."

Ben looked down at the ring. "Can I even wear it? Someone might ask." He snorted and put it back. "You can go to visit your friend. I won't say a word. And it's not exactly like I can run off either. Do you want me to wait here for you, or come find you?"

"Wait here," the guard commanded. "I don't want people recognizing you from barter day." He slipped off and Ben looked back down at the ring on his finger. Then he took it off and replaced it.

"That's a relic from the old times," a familiar voice said from behind him. "It was one of the small treasures of King Adam before the heroes were banished."

Ben turned around and stared. The person stared right back. "Audrey?" He asked.

He barely recognized her. She was a wisp of herself. Thin, with scraggly hair. Her eyes were sunken. Her cheeks were shallow. She had a cut on the side of her face.

"Ben," Audrey whispered, and her eyes raked over him. Her expression twisted. "Are… what are you doing here?"

"I've been sent on an errand," Ben admitted. "From the palace."

Audrey took a sharp breath. "That's what the dragon meant," she realized.

"The dragon?" Ben asked, furrowing his brow.

Audrey reached up and brushed his cheek. "That boy," she whispered. "The one who painted on your face at the auction. He put a dragon on your face to keep people from taking you."

"Oh, Mal," Ben felt his face flush a little. "She's a girl. Her name is Mal. She's the daughter of Maleficent and she's in charge of me."

"Maleficent?" Audrey's voice quaked. The boy behind the desk turned and gave them both a pointed stare. "Sorry," she gasped. "Let's… head back and get what you needed."

"Oh, yeah," Ben nodded, pulling the paper with the drawing out of his pocket. "Here. Can you help me find it?"

Audrey nodded and then reached down to take his hand as they walked. They wandered through racks of clothes, old television sets, and panned preservatives. Ben couldn't see any system to the mayhem. He trusted Audrey though. She was an old friend, even if she looked a little different now.

"You look so thin," he whispered, squeezing her bony fingers. "I thought that Jafar would take care of you."

"He's not so bad," Audrey's voice cracked as she talked. "It's just that the work is hard and I… I'm having trouble adjusting." She brushed her matted hair back. "You don't look too bad though. Did Maleficent hurt your leg?"

"My back," Ben shook his head. "She whipped me. Set me on fire. Did a couple of other things too." He traced the outline of her ribs through her shirt. "You look better than Chad, at least. He's in the courts and it's just… brutal."

"I'm glad you've seen him," Audrey turned back to look at Ben. "And I'm glad to see you." She kept her gaze on Ben's for several long seconds and then led him into a section with thousands of different electrical components on the wall. She examined the paper again. "This is a really specific one," she mumbled.

"Can you find it?" Ben asked, shifting his weight a little. Audrey nodded and began searching shelves. Ben waited, awkwardly twisting his hands, while she worked.

"I'm sorry about your owner," Audrey said after a while. "I can't imagine being owned by that evil… tart."

"I'm not owned by Maleficent," Ben shook his head. "Mal is her daughter. She takes care of me."

Audrey looked over, confused. "Surely she's not that different from her mom?" She asked. "I mean… I haven't heard of her, but she was raised by Maleficent."

"No, she's not," Ben shook his head. "She pulled me out of the dungeons and put me in a room beside hers. You know, I asked her if she'd take you, but she was afraid Maleficent would kill you on sight. So she asked Jay – he's the son of Jafar – to take you and hide you."

"I know Jay," Audrey whispered, pausing in her work to stare at Ben. "You… told them to bring me here?"

"I said I didn't want you going to any of the creeps who were surrounding you," Ben clarified. "Mal said Jay would take care of you." Audrey stared at him. Deep, intense emotions flickered through her eyes. Ben suddenly realized something: here he was, wed-fed, a little injured but not in pain, and walking around without a guard. Meanwhile, Audrey had been trapped here on his unknowing command.

"What's Mal planning on doing with you?" Audrey asked finally.

Ben cleared his throat. "Well… right now I'm just… a pet? Sort of? I run errands and finish work for her and…" his throat constricted when he tried to lie to Audrey, so he broke off about the part where he and Mal were supposedly having an affair. Besides, no one was around. The lie doesn't need to be kept up.

"Does she work for her mom?" Audrey asked, struggling to return her attention to the task at hand.

"Well… sort of? She has to help out in the courts, but she's still a girl like us," Ben explained, wringing his hands and then glancing through the shelves for the cord they're looking for. He'd been standing still for too long. "She's a friend."

"A friend?" Audrey spat, ripping her hand clean off the shelves and glaring at him. "What, so you're one of them now? Have you forgotten who they are? What they do?"

"No!" Ben protested. "No, I haven't forgotten. But Mal… she's different. She's… soft."

"It's all a lie," Audrey hissed. "She's lying to you."

"She can't," Ben laughed. "She can't hide anything from me. I… know her face." Every line. Every wrinkle. Every soft spot and every muscle underneath her skin. He knew her face like he knew how to hold a pencil and step forward. Learning her was like learning to breathe.

"You love her," Audrey realized, and the words grounded Ben with a weight that slammed into the concrete from above and left him stumbling as he stared at her for clarification.

"What?" He gasped.

"You love her. You're doing that… thing you do. When you talk about colors or your mom or books." Audrey's eyes filled with tears. "I can't believe you! You meet someone new and you forget all about us! All about your family and friends… You don't even care about what's going on in the bubble! You could have stopped it and you haven't!"

"What's going on inside the bubble?" Ben demanded. "What's happened?" A cold, sinking dread fell into his stomach.

"Audrey!" Someone snapped from down the aisle and they both turned to see Jay stalking up the row to them. Audrey flinched back before Jay smacked her cheek and Ben shouted in protest. "You were supposed to be done with this ten minutes ago and you're chattering about the crown!" he snapped as he dug up on the shelf for the cord and pulled one down. A purple one with the same inscriptions and everything. It looked new, too.

Tears rolled down Audrey's cheeks as she held the side of her face. Jay pointed down the way he came. "Scram!" He shouted and Audrey hurried away without an issue. Then, Jay seized Ben by the back of his neck and marched him away. Ben struggled to walk as Jay began to whisper in his ear with some bits of spit hitting his lobe.

"This is for Carlos, isn't it?"

"Yes," Ben gasped, reaching to claw at Jay's hand. Jay squeezed harder.

"And no one besides Audrey knows you got it, right?"

"The boy at the front…" Ben choked weakly.

Jay released Ben's neck with a hiss. "Get out and don't come back!" He whispered. "And don't let anyone know you have that!"

He shoved Ben forward and then disappears. Ben stumbled forward until he found himself holding onto the registrar's desk in the front. Jay was gone. Audrey was gone. The Arabian boy was drumming his fingers behind the register as he watched Ben catch his breath and Ben's guard was returning from across the street. "Yeah, he tends to do that," The boy said.

"I'm back, kid," The guard announced when he got close enough. "Find everything?"

"Yeah," Ben agreed, palming the cord to the boy, who rung it up, wrapped it up, and handed it back to Ben. The guard munched on a doughnut and sipped a coffee as Ben passed bills over. He picked up the ring Ben was examining before and offered it to him.

"You sure you don't want this?"

Ben hesitated as he pocketed the wrapped cord and then glanced at the boy behind the register. "What is this ring?" he asked.

The boy shrugged. "Keepsake from the old times," he yawned. "Used to belong to King Beast. Most of the treasuries went to Jafar after the takeover. We've still got lots of items lying around. "

Ben hesitated and then looked over at his guard. "If you would be willing to purchase it, I'd be grateful for it," he said. Without hesitation, the guard slapped a stack of bills down.

It was the first time Ben did something he wasn't technically supposed to.

* * *

Someone slammed the door open to his bedroom and stood in a seething storm for several seconds before stepping inside and seizing the footboard of his bed. They slammed the door closed with their foot and then Ben slowly got to his feet. "You're angry," he observed. It was pretty obvious. "Did you meeting with your mom not go well?"

Mal slowly broke her hands off the footboard and crossed her arms. "You went to town?" She demanded. "Why?"

"Carlos asked me to," Ben shrugged. "I wasn't aware I wasn't allowed to leave."

"You aren't allowed to do anything without at least asking me!" Mal snapped, shoving a finger underneath his nose. "How dare you leave! And to Jafar's shop!"

"It was just a cord, Mal," Ben snapped and then caught her hand when she drew it back to hit him. "Why can't you just talk to me? Quit hitting me all the time and just tell me what's going on!"

"Talk to the prisoner!" Mal snapped. "No, don't touch me!" She shoved him back onto the bed. "Benjamin, how dare you! What were you doing there? Sightseeing? Jay already told me you were talking with your… your… your fling!"

"Is that what this is?" Ben demanded. He wrestled back to his feet. "You're mad I was talking to Audrey?"

"You don't get to talk to anyone who I deem unsafe!" Mal snapped. "It's for your safety, you idiot! What if someone had seen you and put two and two together? How can I keep you safe if you keep waltzing away?"

"You don't get to tell me what to do!"

"Yes, I do! I own you!"

"You can't own people! This is… twisted! You live in a barbaric society!"

"Like it or not, this is the way it is!"

"Oh my gosh! You're acting just like your mother!" He shoved her this time and she hit the wall and stopped herself from falling by grabbing the wall-mounted light. Immediately, guilt filled him. But he couldn't even reach to help her up before she'd collapsed onto the ground and hid her face from him. She pulled the collar of her jacket up over her hair, shaking, and clutched her head.

Ben bent down. "Mal?" he whispered and carefully set a hand on her knee. Mal twisted her body away from him. "Mal, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean… I mean…"

"I don't want you to talk to me," Mal cut him off. When she unveiled her face again, she was white, her eyes were unfocused, and she looked past him without any emotion in her expression.

Ben sat down beside her, leaning against the wall, and put his hand on the carpet between them as some sort of odd peace offering. She didn't even look his way. Her blank stare focused on the doorknob but somehow saw right through it as if nothing was capturing her vision.

Ben traced a pattern in the carpet. "When you want me to stay silent," he whispered, and Mal stirred. "But you start being violent. I can't find where you went in this mess. Stand still without movement; poised, dangerous, and poignant. And still, I remember you at your best."

Mal exhaled. "Did you write that one down?" she whispered.

"Not yet," Ben shook his head. "I kind of just spat it out."

Mal bit her lip. "Jay said he saw you talking to Audrey," she mumbled. "Why did you leave? I thought you'd be here."

Ben leaned back into the wall. "You told me to listen to them," he shrugged. "Carlos wanted me to get a cord. A purple one. He said he couldn't be seen-"

"Don't tell me the rest," Mal shook her head. She pressed her fingertips to her brow. "It's better I don't know. I'm obligated to turn him in. He's forbidden to get his hands on anything that charges too strong of a voltage."

"Oh," Ben exhaled. It seemed rather anticlimactic. "Well, Audrey was helping me. Except we started talking. And the Jay came and slapped her and threw me out."

Mal tugged her legs closer to her chest and examined the carpet on the ground. "He told me," she nodded and sighed. "I… got scared. When I came back and you weren't here… I thought one of the other villains might have taken you."

"Carlos said you wouldn't be back until late."

"I had to fetch something for my mom and you had my bag," Mal replied. She buried her face in her knees again. "Can you… let me know when you leave? Please? Or just leave a note if I'm with my mom?"

"It probably won't happen again," Ben sighed, closing his eyes. "Still, it was nice. I didn't know we were so close to the ocean. And the sky-" he spread his arms out as if he could still see the blue.

"You saw it?" Mal hummed, sitting up with the tiniest traces of a smile decorating her mouth.

"Yeah," Ben set his hands down again. Immediately, something small and warm covered the back of his hand and squeezed.

"I'm glad," Mal whispered, avoiding his gaze. "And… I'm sorry for panicking."

Ben tilted his head at her distant expression. His heart was thumping inside his ears as he turned his hand over and squeezed Mal's back. "You know," he began with a coy tone playing in his voice, "There are other ways to tell someone that you love them."

Immediately, Mal ripped her hand out of his. "What are you talking about?" She sputtered. "I-I don't care about you."

Ben hummed and said nothing else. Mal slowly got to her feet. Her face was even paler now. "Are you leaving?" he asked.

"Yes," she agreed.

Ben traced her body with his eyes. She was still shaking. She looked almost… weak. Not weak as in easily-defeatable, but weak as in she looked like she hadn't been eating in a while. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes," Mal choked, snatching around on the door for the handle.

"Mal?" Ben asked, getting to his feet, "Before you go, I need you to tell me something."

"Ben, I don't want to answer any questions about us or-"

"The Bubble," Ben cut her off. "What's happening in the bubble?"

Mal stared. It took her a long time to respond. Then she shook her head. "I don't want you to know," she responded. "Don't ask me."

She twisted the knob and left before he could scare her anymore.


	8. The Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is tortured by Maleficent again.

He knocked on the door to Mal's bedroom and ignored the spray paint clouds as he wandered past Jay and Carlos's legs and around where Evie was sitting on the bed, working on something in a book. He set down food for them all and then grabbed Mal's arm as she was spraying something up above her headboard. She jumped when he touched her.

"Someone left these for you," he told her, sliding a stack of papers into her hands. Mal's gaze hovered on him and then she took them and began glancing through them.

"Did you read these?" She demanded after reaching the fourth envelope in the stack.

"I assume that's code for 'this is stuff about the Bubble that I don't want you knowing," Ben said, giving her a pointed look. "It's not nice to keep secrets, Mal."

Carlos looked up. "You haven't told him, Mal?"

"No," Mal snapped, glaring at her friend. "He doesn't need to know."

"My parents are still in there, Mal," Ben whispered. "What you do affects them."

"Doesn't matter," Mal snapped. She turned to cough over her shoulder. The windows were open, but paint fumes still filled the air. She took the file and tossed the rest onto her bed. "No one touch those," she demanded. "I need to go talk to my mother and then I'll be right back." She waved her hand to clear the air a little bit before heading to the hall with the file and snapping it closed.

Ben sat down with a huff. "She's been stuck with Maleficent a lot lately," he said aloud to no one in particular. "Are they doing something important?"

Evie, Jay, and Carlos all exchanged looks. Then Carlos pulled a phone out of his pocket and focused on it as he began to talk.

"I don't know why she's so secretive with you," he began. "She gets… weird sometimes. But… you should probably know that Maleficent has been… struggling with the bubble for a while. People are sympathetic. She doesn't like having it around."

"It's a threat," Jay supplied from the ground. "And now that no one wants to have children, she's kinda angry with it."

Ben drummed his fingers on his knees and waited for the blow.

"They'll be cutting rations that are sent to the bubble next week," Carlos admitted. "The Bubble will lose about thirty percent of its import."

"What?" Ben demanded, hair rising on end. "But… it's already thin! If they do that, people will begin to starve!"

Carlos nodded and said nothing. Ben balled his fists up as angry tears pricked his eyes. But that was before the second blow came.

"Maleficent's not in her right mind," Evie consoled him. "She's sick. Mal's hoping she'll come around soon." Something in her voice conveyed the real gravity of the situation. Whatever was happening to Maleficent, it wasn't normal.

* * *

"Do you still dream about me?" Mal asked while dropping her backpack, sensitive items removed, beside his doorframe. Ben grit his teeth.

"Well, you're not sleeping much right now, so no." He gave her a stern look. "Don't think I don't notice you choose to sleep when you know I can't and then stay up all night. Don't think I'm blind to how you're not taking care of yourself."

Mal looked surprised at his venomous attitude. "I wasn't trying to, like, ghost you or anything," she claimed, taking a seat on the edge of his bed. "It's just been hectic. My mom has lots going on."

"Yes, considering she's planning on starving everyone inside the Bubble."

Mal's expression darkened. "They told you," she hissed. "Oh, the fools…"

"Why don't you go blow up at them like you do me? Prove you're even more like your mom than you claim to be."

Mal's eyes narrowed into slits, but she still calmed down. Slowly, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Ben jerked away. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm still working with her, but she's being… stubborn."

"I get it," Ben whispered. "Thank you for trying." He peered up at her through his bangs. "What's your place in the courts?" He asked. "You've never told me."

Mal swallowed. "I'm her daughter," she began, putting her hand on his shoulder and tracing his collarbone with her thumb. "I'm the successor. For one day."

Ben put his hand over her hand. "And when one day comes," he prodded, carefully watching for her reaction, "What will happen to the people in the bubble? What will happen to me?"

Mal didn't seem to have an answer as she pulled her hand back. "You seem to think I know everything," she whispered. "That I have all the answers. What if I'm just as lost and trapped as you are?"

"You'd be in charge. You told me yourself that you're more powerful than Maleficent. I believe you're more compassionate. Would you protect us?" He tried to throw all the earnestness he could conjure behind his gaze.

"Ben," Mal stopped him by taking her hand and pressing a finger to his lips. She wouldn't look at him, but her fingers knew where all the features on his face were. "Please don't ask me something that dangerous." She kept her fingertip against his lips and then shifted her hand to the side so she was suddenly cupping his cheek instead.

He stood up. She backed away. He leaned past her and shut the door and stared at her with fire in his eyes. "Mal," he murmured, and she shook. "Tell me now, please. Tell me the truth."

"The truth?" A question flicked through her eyes. Real and scary and something he didn't want to consider. "The truth of what?"

"You know me," he begged. "I know you know me. Please."

Then there was the realization. She backed away. "I'm sorry, Ben," she whispered. "But I don't know you the way you know me. And this is dangerous enough without me finding out."

She twisted the knob. The door opened. She left. He let her. And when he finally felt his heart break, it both hurt worse and less than he expected.

* * *

The castle shook with Maleficent's screams. Insane, maniacal, and close enough to make Ben's skin chill over. The door to his room burst open. It wasn't her, or anyone he recognized. A man seized him by the neck and hauled him to his feet, scattering papers everywhere. Ben's vision blurred, but he quickly cooperated.

Chains were shackled to his hands and then a group of three guards forced him to march down through the now-familiar corridors. They threw him into the courtroom without a backward glance and Ben shuffled forward into the center.

Maleficent was sat on her throne, apparently unable to stand. Her face was blue as she laughed, but she couldn't seem to stop to breathe. The chair beside her was empty.

Ben looked around the room. The first time he'd been in here, everyone had been laughing and jeering at him. There was none of that now. Everyone avoided his gaze and Ben even caught some putting hands to their ears to block out the maniacal laughter.

No one said anything.

Maleficent had noticed he was there but continued laughing as if she hadn't. Ben wanted to ask if Mal was around, but had enough sense to realize why that would be a horrible idea. This was not Mal, who was soft and gentle with him. This was her mother, and she did not care if he lived or died. Still, his only chance of survival was if Mal somehow appeared.

Part of him still wanted to believe that his soul was linked to Mal's and that she was still lying and that she knew perfectly well who he was. He wanted to believe that if he called for her enough in his thoughts, she'd appear. But it had been weeks of her insisting she didn't know him and her friends rolling their eyes when he brought it up. It was forcing the bitter question into his head: what if she didn't know him on the same level he knew her?

Maleficent's laughter ceased abruptly and she slumped over in her chair with glass eyes. Had she died? Right there? But no, she stirred and pointed to a position three feet to Ben's left side. "Release him!" She commanded in a voice that sounded like she'd been in the sun for years.

A familiar face stepped forward. Chad, still here. He looked so weak he could barely drag himself forward. If Ben had had the opportunity to, he probably could have wrapped a single hand around Chad's biceps. Skin that had once been supple and tanned now hung from his face. The muscles had wasted away.

The shackles clattered to the ground. Ben didn't dare move. He exhaled as Chad stepped away. Then, tongue wetting his lips briefly, he found the courage to speak up. "Your majesty," he called, giving her the same title he would have had if she didn't exist, "Might I enquire for the presence of your daughter?"

The crowd stirred. Ben wasn't sure if they were unused to prisoners speaking or if they were simply scornful of his audacity. Maleficent, too, licked her lips as she continued to stare to the far left of where Ben stood. Her gaze was crossed. "Who?" She asked, and then slumped dangerously to the right as if her vision had tilted. She was now looking at the immediate left of Ben's face.

"Mal," he stated. "Your daughter. I expected to be called by her, though I will, of course, render you the respect you deserve."

It took a long time for Maleficent to process that he'd spoken, what he'd said, and what she wanted to say in return. Then she let out a bark of a laugh. "She is mine!" she declared. "And you? You are mine as well."

She waved her hand and pain crashed down on his skin, so intense that his world whited out and he crashed to the ground with a guttural yell. His head slammed against the ground and suddenly, he couldn't get up. The far-right side of his vision was gone. The pain continued though, and so Ben continued writhing and yelling on the ground as Maleficent cackled. Her laughs were so quiet they could barely be heard over his screams.

He ate a mouthful of pebbles that probably had someone else's blood on them as his cheek was raked against the ground.

His fingernails were pried off his hands as he clawed them through the crack of the ground.

The door was flung open.

"Mom?" Mal demanded, stepping inside and then jumping back in horror when she discovered the scene in front of her. The pain ceased, though Ben twitched uncontrollably. No relief filled his senses as he watched Mal mask her shock. "What's he doing down here?" She demanded.

Maleficent began to laugh, curse, and choke all at the same time. She threw her hand out to the side. "Fools!" She screamed. "Ignorant, belligerent fools! The lots of them! The audacity!"

"Mom!" Mal yelled, crossing the room, walking around him, and then taking Maleficent's shoulders to help prop her up. "You can't be down here like this! You need to be resting!"

"They'll die!" Maleficent screamed, trying to point at him and pointing more at the people in the stands, who shrank back and began to shake in fear. "They'll all die! Every last one of them!"

"Mom, calm down," Mal commanded, and her mother took a steadying breath. "Why are you being like this? You're just going to over-exert yourself. Let's go back to your room and I'll take care of you. This prisoner still has to finish a few things I told him to do anyways."

"No," Maleficent's voice seemed strangely steady as she sat up straight. "No, no. He's been here long enough. It's time."

"Time?" Mal asked, but Ben's ears stopped working after that. It was as if a shell had been wrapped around his body, and now it was forcing him to move. He got to his feet, head swaying and every muscle trembling. And then his own fist crashed into the side of his head.

Maleficent was laughing. Mal was shouting.

He threw himself to the ground against his shoulder and felt it pop out of joint. The pain sent fireworks across his vision. He didn't have any nails left but he dragged his forearms against the rough earth to try and cut them open. His head arched back towards his legs as his entire body flailed out of his control.

When it ended, he was aware of Mal shaking her unresponsive mother with tears falling down her face. Maleficent was hyper-focused on him, laughing as he trembled from the aftershocks.

A knife was tossed onto the floor by Chad, who was also crying. Ben reached out to pick it up. His brain was screaming at his hand to obey him, but he could do nothing – not even scream – as he splayed his left hand out on the ground and used his right hand to cut off the first two centimeters of his middle finger.

People in the stands were turning away and looking green.

Another two centimeters. Ben was fading in and out of consciousness now. He raised the knife to do a third, and then a green barrier appeared in front of his hand, forbidding him. The hold on his body was relinquished, and Ben became aware of Maleficent and Mal screaming at each other.

"I will not allow the spawn of fools to grace my castle any longer!"

"He's mine, Mom! He's mine and you're ruining him!"

"You are mine! What he is is nothing!"

"He's something to me!"

"You are weak for having such a connection! How can you ever expect to be the queen I am if you protect servants?"

"Mom, I like him! I like having him! I don't want you to kill him because he's my favorite!"

"Then pick someone else!"

Ben pulled his hand to his chest. Blood dripped in a steady stream. Red. He knew red. Red was the color of the rocks at home. Red was roses that bloomed in the crevices. He looked over at Mal, fist balled and frame shaking, and Maleficent. What was going on?

Maleficent nodded to Ben. "Pick someone else," She commanded. "To take it for him. Go on."

Mal gave the room a cursory, pained glance. It was clear that she knew most of the people in the stands herself. She singled out someone over Ben's shoulder. "Him," she decided. There was a strangled gasp. Someone picked up Ben's bloodied knife. Ben turned to see who it was and watched Chad, with green light covering him, force the knife through his own chest.

"Chad!" Ben yelled. Maleficent released his friend and Chad hit his knees, clawing at his chest. Ben rolled as Chad collapsed into the rock. Tear scorched his eyes. He couldn't move his hands enough to even touch Chad as the two friends locked eyes and then Chad stilled and stopped breathing.

Death was such an odd thing. It did nothing and everything. Chad's body seemed, at the same time, everything Ben had ever seen before and yet so small he could barely look at him. He didn't move at all yet Ben couldn't stop re-seeing the motion of his breaths. His frame was here, lying against Ben's, but Chad was gone.

Someone took Ben's shoulders and rolled him over, away from the body. "Hand," Mal demanded, trying to pry his bleeding finger away from where he clutched it to his chest. "Now."

"Get off me!" Ben pushed her back with such force that she tripped over his chains and fell into the ground. "You've killed him! You killed him! You… you cruel and… you heartless… you monster!"

His voice cut off as Mal silenced him with a wave of her hand. She got back up, ignoring his struggling, and somehow managed to press her fingertips to his forehead. Ben felt his vision go black immediately, but the rage and heartbreak remained boiling in his stomach long after he went unconscious.

* * *

Jay sat beside him, reading through the poetry on the desk while Ben stared at the wall, shaking occasionally. Mal wouldn't allow him to be left alone for long, but he refused to look at her and his rejection was painful for her. So she sent others to do her bidding while he slowly recovered.

She'd healed most of him when he'd been asleep. He'd woken up blurry-eyed but recovered from the beating he'd given himself. Jay had whispered something about a concussion the first time he'd come around, but Ben didn't know the specifics. All he knew was that he was missing part of his finger, a friend, and a majority of his sanity.

Jay shuffled the pages around.

He didn't get much privacy when it came to Mal's friends. They rifled through his things and shared secrets amongst themselves. He wasn't sure how much talk got back to Mal herself.

Jay flipped a page over.

Maleficent had been silent ever since that day in the courtroom.

"You should write more of these."

Ben glanced at Jay. "Are those the ones about her?" he asked.

Jay shrugged one shoulder, which was answer enough. Ben turned back towards the wall. "Can't. Those feelings are all dead now."

"Well, that's fine. Romance is dead anyways." Ben felt the bed shift dramatically and then was forced to sit up as Jay hefted him up and propped him against the wall like a ragdoll. A pad of paper and a blue pen were worked into his grasp. Ben shook at the feel of the pad.

"Why do you care? They're words. They're nothing."

"Not to us."

"To who?"

Jay shook his head as he tucked the poems into his back pocket. "Just write, Ben. It'll make you feel better."

Ben drew a little swirl on the paper with a stubborn frown. "What are words that rhyme with traitor?" he asked sarcastically, and then wrote the word down. "Dictator, jailer…"

"Savior," Jay suggested. Ben hissed and an angry line went through the word. More boiling tears bubbled in his eyes. Jay said nothing.

Ben did write. He wasn't sure how he managed it, but he did. He wrote and clawed the pen through three pages at once and then tears blotted out the bad words and bad poems. The edges of the pages crinkled from the sweat in his hand until he flung the useless, expressionless papers at the bed and shook his head. "I can't," he declared. "The words won't work. She's… she's ruined them all!"

Jay didn't reach for the papers. Instead, he cleared his throat. "Chad got a bad job," he whispered. "Most people don't last there. They go insane. And he did. Mal picked him because she knew he wanted to go."

Ben exploded. He hurled the pen at Jay, then the sketchpad, then his pillow before he turned away and curled up to continue crying.

"Ben," the whisper came. "It would have been you."

"Then it's his blood on my hands!"

"No, it's Maleficent's."

Ben looked back up at him. "What would you know?" he croaked. "You live in the palace and your father is Jafar. Your parents aren't starving to death. You haven't been sold. Your friends aren't being killed off."

Jay swept all the crumpled pieces of paper onto the floor. "I know," he agreed.

Ben stared at him. "Aren't you going to argue with me?" he asked.

Jay shrugged. "Maleficent's been spiraling for a while. Mal thinks she's committed too much murder, and now she's being tormented by ghosts. She keeps lashing out. Mal's performed a few exorcisms, but it only helps for a little while."

"Don't say her name," Ben demanded, but Jay ignored him.

"The people of the courts and Maleficent have determined that Maleficent won't be able to rule much longer."

That made Ben stop. He uncurled his legs and stared at Jay. "What?" He asked.

Jay swallowed. "Maleficent has asked to be put down and for Mal to step up in her place," he explained. "She will rule for two more months and then one of two things will happen. Mal will cease protecting her mom from the spirits who are trying to attack her and she will be left alone until she starves or until the ghosts kill her, or Mal will be the one to put her mother out." He picked up the pen and twirled it in his fingers. "If Mal acts too far out of line, then she'll be removed from the line of succession and it'll go to the next in line. Whoever is closest to Maleficent and who had the most right to revenge. Right now, that's Gaston. After Gaston, Jafar."

"Why are you telling me this?" Ben asked. He'd managed to pull himself out of his rut long enough to consider what Jay was saying to him. He put his feet on the ground for what felt like the first time in ages and ignored his shorter finger as he set his hands on his knees.

"Because Mal almost cut herself out of succession last week," Jay admitted. "When she told Maleficent to let you live. I don't think you heard, but Maleficent basically said that if she didn't let her kill you, then she'd be disowned. Then you would have been handed over to Gaston, Mal would have had no political power, and she'd be hunted."

Jay pulled a ring off his finger. Ben realized with a start that it was the gold one from his dad's shop that the guard had bought him. "There are a few things you don't realize are at play. For example, I don't think you've realized what Maleficent is trying to do with the Bubble." He leveled his eyes at Ben and tossed the ring back to him. "You think your people are okay with sending their children away to die? Or being slowly starved and worked to death? The more details that get back, the fewer people want to cooperate. The more Maleficent is haunted by the people who've come from there, well, the less she wants to put up with resistance."

"Resistance?" Ben demanded, sitting up even straighter. "Are you saying that they're… rebelling?"

"Jafar is third in line," Jay whispered. "He wants to be second, but Gaston has a right of conquest. Through your dad. As long as your dad exists, Gaston has a right to rule over him. Because King Adam was going to be the high king and not Sultan Aladdin, Gaston is higher ranked than Jafar. Lady Tremaine is dead, so is Facilier. Jafar is third unless King Adam dies because then Gaston doesn't have that right to rule over him. And Jafar has always hated the people in the bubble while Gaston likes to play with them. If they were to suddenly go away…"

Ben's mouth dropped open. He suddenly realized what Jay was implying with Maleficent's plans for the bubble.

"Of course, none of that matters if Mal exists because she's more powerful than any of the other villains. Her mom is Maleficent and her dad is-" he paused, examining Ben. "Very powerful. They can't fight her on the throne now that she's finally sixteen. If she were younger, they'd just take over anyways. But now, she'll grow up and probably have a daughter of her own who'll take over. Which would be unfortunate for Jafar and Gaston and everyone else in line. But hey, if there's a boy who she risks her hide to protect and save from her mom in front of everyone else in the court, well…" Jay held his hands up in a sort of 'I give up' gesture before getting to his feet.

"Jafar and Gaston," Ben gasped. "Were they in the courtroom when Maleficent-"

"They're some of her most trusted advisors," Jay cut him off. "You think they were gone? No. They both watched Mal almost get cut out of her inheritance. And that's not even everything. You see, Jafar was pretty pissed to find out you existed. We didn't know Ol'King Adam had a son. We figured he'd be smart enough to not procreate after Maleficent's decree went through. Now there's an argument… even if your dad dies inside the barrier, you might be enough for Gaston to retain a right of conquest. Meaning my dad really, really doesn't like you at the moment."

"And if I die," Ben breathed, "Then Mal breaks down and loses everything. After that-"

"If you die, then Mal murders the person who did it. She made that pretty clear. This is why my dad hasn't ordered me to bring your head," Jay interrupted, kicking his feet up onto the bed. "But now you're open to assassins. You think we've been hanging around to make sure you're not alone after losing your friend? We're hanging around to make sure you don't die." Jay kicked the bed in annoyance. "You and your flowery poetry and your insistence that you know Mal have unintentionally made you a political bomb. And Maleficent hasn't even realized what's going on yet. Do you know what would happen if she heard, for example, that the servant-slave who's her daughter's favorite is claiming to have been dreaming about her since before he came to Auradon? That he thinks Mal knew him too, and that's why she singled him out in the marketplace?"

Ben's mouth was dry and his hands shook as he stared at Jay. Jay snorted. "Yeah. Exactly. But you keep being an idiot and walking around our shop without guards, shouting at her, looking straight at her with _that_ look while you're being tortured…" He scoffed and leaned back in his chair. A knock came at the door and Jay caught the handle with his foot. It opened and Carlos slipped in. He gave Jay and Ben a cursory glance as Jay stood up and offered his seat to Carlos.

Before he left, he pointed at Ben. "You keep your head down," he commanded, and with that last command, Ben was left to dwell on everything.

* * *

The courts were temporarily adjourned while Maleficent's health continued to fade. Jay, Carlos, and Evie kept Ben updated on the happenstances of the government. Claude Frollo and Hans were trying to get close to Maleficent. Harry Hook had cornered Mal and tried to enamor her, but she'd had none of it. Gaston had caught an assassin that everyone was assuming had been intended for Ben.

Ben wasn't sure when his life had become a spy novel.

Mal never came around and he wasn't allowed out much anymore. They were trying to keep Ben in a contained area and distance the connection between him and Mal. The longer they tried, the more Ben wanted to see the purplette. He didn't even see her in his dreams anymore.

Two weeks went by and news leaked to the outside that the daughter of Maleficent would be taking over. Apparently, Mal's existence was a best-kept secret. Many people knew the purple-haired girl but didn't know how closely connected she was with the courts. They didn't know who she was. Mal dropped school and quit bringing him things. She spent all her time with her mom. According to Evie, Maleficent was only coherent for a few hours at a time. Most of the day she spent tethered to her bed and frothing at the mouth. Mal sat by her side, anxiously awaiting the end.

There would be no public coronation or change of power. Mal would be taking over as soon as Maleficent was unwell enough.

Then, one night, when Ben fell asleep, she was there.

They were in a room he didn't recognize. It was dark but warm. She sat on a chair in a corner beside a large, blood-red bed. All around the walls were huge and heavy tapestries of battles, dragons, and the former heroes and villains. Statues and busts also were lined against the walls, some with feathered headdresses hanging from them or helmets that were meant to be worn by someone with horns.

"You're here," he called. Mal jumped. She hadn't heard him appear. She felt up and down her body and then a forced smile stretched across her mouth.

"Hello," she whispered, voice cracking as she stood up and walked toward him. "I haven't seen you in a while. You went away."

"I haven't seen you either," Ben whispered. He glanced over at the bed. Mal had walked away from it, trying to split his attention, but he realized now that a sickly woman with long, mauve hair was laid back on it. Her head was tilted slightly back as if she had been prepped for CPR but no one had begun the process. It was probably to help her breathe as she slept. "How is she?" he asked.

"Who?" Mal asked, blinking tiredly and then turning to examine the woman. "Oh. I didn't see her. I don't know. Don't we usually go to your place?"

Ben shrugged. Mal continued smiling, then turned over her shoulder and coughed. She sounded like she was hacking up a lung as she tried to catch her breath, then turned and forced the dim smile to return. "Sorry," she apologized.

"You don't have to apologize," Ben assured her, skimming over her paler-than-normal colors. "And Mal? You don't have to smile if you don't want to."

Mal's smile faded and she nodded with a sigh as she glanced back over at Maleficent. "I never can fool you, huh?" She said.

"Is she still alive?" Ben asked, referring to Maleficent.

"She's breathing," Mal nodded, gesturing to the body. "Do you know her?"

Ben stilled and then shook his head. "No," he whispered, finally letting the last bit of hope in his soul die. "I don't. But her daughter will take over soon."

"Ah. So she's powerful?" Dream Mal asked.

Ben nodded. "Very," he agreed.

"Is her daughter powerful?" Dream Mal asked. She wandered over to the bed and pulled the covers up more. Ben felt something like needles stinging his eyes.

"Yes," He agreed. "She's very kind and beautiful too."

"This woman isn't very beautiful," Dream Mal observed, peering down at Maleficent. Ben watched her hands shake and sat down in the chair she'd been sitting in. "She… she does look like she's gone. She's barely breathing."

Ben sniffed and Dream Mal looked up at him. "You're sad," she whispered. "What happened?" She returned to his side and laid a hand on his shoulder. Immediately, Ben took both of her hands and began pressing kisses onto her palms. Dream Mal looked very confused.

"I was so sure," he croaked. "So sure. But lately, we're just so far apart… I miss you. I want to go back." Tears were burning his eyes. His hands shook as they held onto hers.

"Hey, it's okay," Dream Mal told him and pulled her hands out of his. She bent down and hugged him. A real hug. One that he almost flinched out of. "I'm sure I'll be back more often. It's okay."

Ben shook his head and buried his face into her shoulder. "That's not what I meant," he hiccupped. "I-I thought you were real. That my best friend was real. I wanted you to be real and part of my world because you mean… everything to me. I never thought to tell you before because I thought you were only a dream, but I love you. You're… you're my person. The person who gets along with my person. Whatever your soul is made of, my soul loves it."

Dream Mal's hands stilled. "What?" She asked, sounding startled. "You… you love me? Why?"

"Because of everything," Ben sniffed. "Because you talk to me and you protect me and you made jokes with me. You like my poetry and you like me. Because I felt like… like we were both halves. And when we were together, my world was just better."

"But…" Dream Mal looked astounded. "Well… I'm real, aren't I? Just tell me that there."

Ben shook his head. "You're a great person in real life," he spat out bitterly, wiping away his tears with one hand before hiding his face away again. "But I fell for you here. I fell for the girl who was so insulted I kissed her cheek that she fell off my front porch. Who couldn't figure out how to pick a rose with thorns. I fell for you and everything we had. And I guess I could have the same thing with the other Mal, but I… I wanted you. I wanted the Mal I grew up with."

Dream Mal tangled her hands into his hair and then sat down on his legs. She rubbed little circles into his scalp while he cried into her shoulder.

"Maybe…" she hummed. "Maybe there's still something to be done."

But Ben didn't have enough hope for that anymore. He just stayed with his arms trapping her against his body until he woke back up with tears staining his pillow. Evie was above him, shaking him. "Ben?" She called, and he rolled over. Her face was white as she sat back down. "Are you awake?" She asked.

"I am now," Ben replied.

Evie swallowed and twiddled her thumbs together in her lap. "Listen, we just got some bad news from Mal. Maleficent is almost gone, but she has one more thing she wants to do before she dies."

"What?" Ben asked, swinging his legs off the bed and standing up.

Evie closed her eyes. "Maleficent has decided to destroy the bubble. They're assembling an army to do it. Mal will lead it to prove she's ready to take on the throne. Everyone inside will die."

Ben had seen blue before. He knew the color was the sky; the ocean.

It was the same color that clouded his vision when he realized what that meant for him.


	9. The Revolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben returns home

Ben remembered getting sick. For as quickly as he had succumbed to his illness, Mal fell slowly. First, her cough, which he heard occasionally when she walked down the hall, grew thicker. Evie and Carlos started whispering about how her eyes glazed over and about how she was swaying as she sat in meetings. She stumbled in the hallways, almost passed out during dinner, and then vanished from the courts entirely.

Ben waited until Evie needed to use the restroom on her watch, scribbled a note detailing where he'd be and then snuck out, even though he was very aware that he needed to not die right not. The hall was empty as he snuck down and twisted the knob to Mal's room. He found it locked. That wasn't a problem. He bent down, examined the larger, older keyhole and then quickly broke his pen to fish out the ink capsule. Then, using the back of it, he began to pick the inside of the lock.

As a child, Ben had read a book in which the main character was able to pick a lock with a hairpin. He'd been so impressed by the concept that he'd dismantled several dozen locks to discover how one might be picked before practicing for hours. Had Mal known the dream him, she might have magically reinforced her locks. As it was, the lock clicked back and he was able to enter without a problem. He locked it behind him afterward.

Mal was sprawled out on top of the covers of her bed, fast asleep and shivering. Both shoes on, hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, and moaning softly in her sleep.

He pulled off her jacket and hung it in the accustomed spot by the door before tugging her shoes off, pulling off her gloves and bracelets, and then carefully pulled back the covers of her bed. He pushed all of her pillows aside, sat down, and then laid her out on her stomach with her head on his legs so he could run his fingertips through her hair.

And there he sat.

Evie came in with tight lips after she picked the lock herself and then decided to say nothing as she pulled out her sketchbook and started drawing. Ben fished on the side table for the bible that he'd left there before he'd left. "Can I have some paper?" He asked Evie.

She handed him a few sheets with pursed lips.

Mal woke up later. She looked very confused to find a set of legs underneath her. "Hello," Ben whispered. She almost jumped out of her skin as he leaned over for a flask of broth that had been set on the nightstand. "Thirsty?" he asked.

"What are you doing here?" Mal moaned. She closed her eyes and covered them with her hands for good measure.

"I'm here to take care of you," Ben replied, knitting his hand into her hair. "I thought I should return the favor."

Mal squinted between her fingers at him and then curled up closer to his leg. "You should go," she mumbled. "I shouldn't be seen with you like this."

"Good thing no one's looking," Ben sighed. Mal didn't respond. She'd already gone back to sleep.

* * *

"Time has long since lectured; my contacts I should rend. But I'd be lost if I never learned; the gratification of a friend," Ben recited the moment he knew she was awake enough to hear him. She traced a fingertip up his leg and hummed. Ben let a corner of his mouth raise up. "I walked and found; a barrier in my road; so I turned and took a path; to a place I hadn't known. The way was bumpy and rough as I trod through grey; passing dust and bits of stuff as I trod on my way. I think you must have appeared - materializing before my face; Your presence I calmly considered when you took my side as your place."

"I like it," Mal managed to choke out before she dissolved into a coughing fit. Ben took the flask and handed it to her and she managed to take a long drink without any more coughs.

"You feeling better?" He whispered and Mal nodded a bit while continuing to snuggle into his side. "Good."

"Ben?" Mal whispered, balling his shirt up in her fists. "You know you don't have to stay here, right?"

"I know," Ben assured her.

"Then why do you?" She grumbled.

"Because," Ben pet her hair down. "I told you that there were better ways of telling people you loved them, and this is one of the best ways I know how."

He couldn't tell if the blush that followed his statement was fever-induced or not. She erupted into coughs and carefully struggled away from his side. "You-you're just teasing," she claimed when she began to regain herself. "Aren't you?"

Ben shook his head. Mal stared. "Well, you shouldn't love me," she told him. "I'm just like, well, her." She gestured to the floor.

Ben shook his head again. "You're going to do better than she did, aren't you?" He asked.

Mal's expression darkened with realization and hurt. "You heard," she whispered. "You heard and that's why you're here. You're hoping I'll turn against her."

Ben swallowed. He was on thin ice now. He could pretend not to know what she was talking about, or he could face it. "I'm here because you're special to me," he told her, and this was true. "And I'll be here to take care of you." He cupped her face in his hands. "And yes, you're breaking my heart. And I'm hoping you'll change your mind. But I'm here because you were the friend I needed growing up, and now I want to be the friend you need."

Mal squeezed his hands. "Ben," she whispered in the sick tone that people did when they were trying to think of important things and they didn't want to. "She's sick. She's dying. Do you expect me to turn against her? Now?"

Ben had to fight to keep tears from welling in his eyes. "Do you expect me to watch you murder my parents without a protest?"

Mal pushed him away. "I think you should leave," she hiccupped. "It's… it's not good for you to be here. We shouldn't be together – here."

"I think I should stay," Ben wiped his eyes. "Because if we're never able to look at each other in the eyes again then at least we'll have this."

He wasn't sure who started crying first. Him or Mal. She curled into his chest like a kitten and he snuggled with her under the covers with her fists balled into his blue shirt. Hiccupping apology after apology and trying not to let her nose run horribly. He held her to him like he'd wanted to for years and then together they sobbed with the lights on but buried so far underneath the sheets that it was as if the entire world had gone dark.

"I'm sorry," she hiccupped. "I'm sorry. Please, please don't ever forgive me."

Ben didn't even know how much pain a person had to be in to beg to not be forgiven.

"Mal," he croaked against her shoulder. Her hair was sticking to the tears on his face. "Please. Please don't let this all end like this." Though he knew there wasn't much even Mal could do. Until Maleficent died, she had to obey or risk Gaston obtaining Ben and the ensuing political chaos.

Her lips pressed against his cheek once, twice, and then hovered dangerously close to his mouth before moving away. He felt her pull his head down and press their foreheads together instead of kissing him, and that felt more fitting.

"Ben?" Mal asked through the still, heart-wrenching darkness.

"I'm here," Ben whispered back.

Mal pressed a finger to his lips, then her other hand traced the outline of his face. His brow line, his jaw, everything. It was dark, but she acted as if she had it memorized. "I've lied," she whispered.

"Lied?" Ben asked.

"I do know you."

The world was already dark and very heavy. But suddenly it was still as well. He reached for her cheeks. "You do?" he asked, feeling lighter as his doubts left him. "Really?"

"Benjamin Florian, yes," Mal hissed, sounding like she was either laughing or crying in the dark. "You… you sap! You weren't supposed to be real. Nothing like you is supposed to be real. How dare you exist!"

"You know my name…" Ben started crying again. "I knew… I knew it." He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Why now?" He asked.

Mal's hand stilled. So did Ben's. Somehow, they found their way to each other and their fingers morphed into a mess of nails and knuckles. He didn't need her answer, but she gave it anyway. "Because this is it," she whispered.

* * *

The door to Mal's room closed. Ben looked up from his place on the bed. She stood in the doorway, in a black jumpsuit, with a crown of white atop her head. He stared. With her dark makeup, black outfit, and the crown covering up most of the purple, she barely looked like his Mal.

"So, it happened, then?" He asked.

She nodded.

"She's gone?" Ben asked.

Mal shook her head. "Almost," her voice cracked. "We all expect she'll be gone tomorrow."

She unzipped her jacket, revealing purple underneath, and then removed the crown from her head to set it down on the desk. Ben stared at it. It was white, gave off some sort of a glint, and gave off the very impression of evil. Mal scoffed without feeling at it. "It's made from bone," she told him, and he flinched back. "I think it was someone's skull. Somewhat fitting, don't you think?"

Ben looked away from it. Mal sat down on her bed adjacent to him and began prying off her shoes. Ben got up, circled around on unsteady feet, and took her heads. "I have a request," he whispered, getting to his knees.

Mal turned away. "I don't want to hear it," she told him. "I already told you that I can't go against my mother. Not now."

"Mal," Ben whispered, squeezing his fingers in a vice grip. "Please, don't hurt anyone in that bubble. Let them go. You're in charge now. What's the harm?"

Mal pulled her hands out of his and shoved him back. "Yes, and what of Gaston? And Jafar? They're on the front lines, ready to pull Aladdin and King Adam through the streets by their guts. Legions of soldiers are assembled and Maleficent will be watching the entire thing by my side. Jafar's assassins are already lining up for my head while everyone is looking sideways at you, knowing that you're… someone!" She threw her hands out. "I'm trying to protect you, Ben. What more can I do?"

Ben shook his head. "Mal, I can't watch them all die," he whispered. "Please, please, I beg of you. Stop this."

Mal turned away. "I think it's best if you leave now," she decided. "Go back to your room or go back to the cells. Either way."

"If you'll go through with it all then I beg you to kill me!" Ben snapped and Mal almost collapsed in shock. He reached for her hand, gave her face a quick caress, and held her gaze. "Don't put me through this. Don't make me listen for my mother and father screaming. Don't make me know my friends and their parents are dead. Don't turn the girl I love into a murderer while I'm still here to witness it all. Kill me."

Mal shoved him so he went sprawling across the floor, but then he kept skidding back as she used magic to force him out into the hall. "Out!" She shouted, and the door slammed.

Ben crouched down into the shadows. Did it matter if she was his Mal? If she'd grown up beside him and been his secret-keeper for years? No, apparently not. Not if she was exactly like the monster her mother was.

* * *

Daylight came and Jay and Carlos came to his door with shackles in hand. He wasn't sure what they were for since Maleficent had been dysfunctional for days, but he didn't complain when they snapped the cuffs onto his wrists and ankles and urged him forward.

Out in the courtyard, dozens were assembled. An army as wide as the eye could see, all moving out into the open. Jay and Carlos forced him into a car and then they drove ahead of the soldiers.

It had not been a long drive from the barrier and it was not a long march either. Ben could see people gathering inside, watching the amassing soldiers and crying out in fear and alarm as they came and surrounded them. Jay and Carlos pulled him past the front lines and towards a wooden platform where Mal, Maleficent, and a stone-faced Evie were. Maleficent was lying in a hospital bed, with white froth bubbling from her mouth as the occasional high-pitched laugh escaped her throat. As Ben walked, he saw a man in blood-red robes and another with bulging muscles appear. Jafar and Gaston.

Ben was taken up by the platform and made to stand beside Mal, who wouldn't look at him. His heart rent and burned within his chest as he looked at the people begging for mercy inside the barrier. Nothing to protect them. No warning given.

He'd always known Maleficent was a monster, but who knew her daughter would turn out to be just as ruthless?

"Is everything ready?" Mal asked Carlos. Carlos looked closely at Maleficent, then nodded.

"Wha?' Maleficent squawked, sounding a bit like a bird.

"Nothing, Mom," Mal assured her, stepping to her mom's side and stroking her matted hair. "Jay, where is everyone?"

Jay pointed to the back, behind the first wave of soldiers. Ben squinted and could make out a flamboyant red coat in the distance. Cruella De Evil. All of the villains had come out to cheer on the destruction of the heroes.

Ben collapsed to the ground, took the hem of Mal's jacket, and buried his face into her side. "Mal," he begged, in pain as if his body was being ripped and destroyed from the anguish. "Please, Mal!"

Jay and Carlos pulled him back. God, he was a mess.

"Is she gone?" Carlos asked, nodding to Maleficent.

Mal stroked the side of her mother's face, tracing down to her neck. Her fingers hovered there for several seconds, and then she shook her head. "No," she shook her head and then glanced at Jay. "Give it to me."

Jay reached into his sleeve and pulled out a knife. A knife he recognized. A knife that probably still had his blood on it.

Mal traced her fingertips across Maleficent's cheek. "You remember when I was young?" she asked in an angelic trill. "You used to tell me something important. Whenever I messed up. Do you remember?" She took the knife from Jay. Maleficent didn't respond, she was staring at the green barrier with thirst in her eyes. "You said the powerful get away with everything, while the weak perish," Mal hissed. "And I think it's high time we followed through with that."

Without a flinch, she dragged the knife across Maleficent's throat.

Carlos reached underneath the bed and withdrew a machine with a green lightbulb on top and many different wires looping around it. Ben recognized the purple cord – the one he'd brought him – attaching itself to the chair. "Long live evil," he announced to the group, flicking the switch on.

"We're rotten to the core," Mal hissed as some part of a mantra that Ben didn't understand. She put her finger over the lightbulb, and it was as if a supernova exploded. Once again, the sky was green. The air was green. And Mal was floating a few inches off the ground, eyes and skin and hair all vividly green as she seethed with uncontrollable power.

Carlos wasn't supposed to have things that used a lot of voltage.

Mal was more powerful than her mother, she'd said.

Carlos had _super-charged_ Mal.

The crowd of soldiers all looked up towards the platforms and Ben saw that their eyes were green. Green that matched Mal's. Because they were all under her control.

Evie forced Ben to the ground. "Stay down!" she commanded.

"Soldiers," Mal announced in a voice that echoed off every particle in the air. Jafar and Gaston looked up along with the rest of the villains who were waiting to lead the front lines. "We have a new enemy. Destroy all of the villains."

Ben heard a cry of outrage from Gaston before the soldiers all moved as one. Ben heard screams and cries from the back of the crowd as they wave split and began to assassinate the villains who'd gathered to witness the destruction of the heroes. Evie covered Ben's eyes as shrapnel flew around them.

_Mal had gathered all the villains together to get rid of them._

_Her mother had unwittingly allowed for her own destruction and for the demise of all her allies._

And Ben was safe.

It had all happened so quickly… how could it be? Mal had only been sixteen for a couple of months… she was barely able to take over her mother's throne. And Maleficent had gotten sick so quickly… she had succumbed only weeks after Ben arrived, almost as if he'd… triggered something.

It all suddenly made so much sense, he wanted to laugh.

Mal, the primary caregiver of Maleficent. Mal, the teenager who was just barely able to take over the throne. Mal, who had known him from the first day. She'd gotten her revenge, attained her power, and saved Ben.

The carnage was over in minutes. The people stood on the other side of the barrier, shocked. Mal stretched forth her hand, and just as if it was made out of soap, the bubble popped. Mal took her hand off the bulb and Carlos shut off the machine, glancing sheepishly at the other two. Mal stretched out her hand, shaking a little on her feet, and brought Ben to his feet. The two stood in silence for a long few seconds.

"Prince Benjamin?" Mal offered, tilting her head to the left.

Ben reached out and fixed Mal's crown to be at a jaunty angle on her head. "Queen Maleficent?" he responded, laughing. He leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Mal's face morphed into shock and outrage. She tripped backward, looking disgusted, and tumbled right off the platform and into a group of dazed soldiers. Ben, Evie, Jay, and Carlos all burst into laughter as she scowled and climbed off the soldiers.

"How dare you!" She snapped. "I will- I will!"

"Kill my goldfish?" Ben spiked an eyebrow.

Mal's expression softened. She sighed and crossed her arms as she looked up at him. "Benjamin Florian, what am I going to do with you?" she sighed. Then, she crooked her finger. "Come down."

Ben quickly crossed to the stairs and hobbled down. He was still bound in his chains. Mal took his arm. "Come on," she scoffed and began to lead him past the scorched earth where the bubble had boiled for all those long years. They walked into the street and the crowd parted easily. Ben saw Peter Pan, Wendy, Cinderella and Henry, Tiana, Naveen, and Rapunzel. They gawked at him as he crossed their paths.

"I always thought you were my conscious," Mal whispered when no one could hear. "I thought you were… the manifestation of my guilt. I didn't think anyone as perfect as you could exist."

She kept a hold on his chains as she continued leading him. Mal knew where to go. Of course, she did. She had practically grown up here with him. She knew him. He knew her.

His parents were waiting on the doorstep for him. In their hands were the bunched-up pages of poetry that the four had stolen from him and the one letter that Ben had written. When he saw them, tears of joy sprang to his eyes even though he'd already done far too much crying for one lifetime. They came rushing down the steps, shouting for joy, and picked him up as they held on for dear life. Ben hugged back as best he could. Nothing could top this glee inside of him.

The shackles loosened and fell to the ground. Ben watched Mal tuck the key into her pocket. Jay must have passed it over with the knife. He hadn't even noticed her remove the ones on his feet. He rubbed his sore wrists and then threw his arms around her, too. She looked just as uncomfortable as she had up on the platform.

"I think you've had enough," Mal said slowly as he withdrew from her. "And… it's been a lot. You should be home now. You should be home with your parents, so you can properly heal." And she nodded to his mother and father, acknowledging that she was releasing him to them.

"And you?" Ben asking, taking her hands. "You've been through lots, too. Stay with us for a while. Please. I want my parents to get used to the girl I want to make my wife one day."

Mal's face erupted into red, which she promptly hid from sight. Ben's parents, to their credit, took this news with stride and Belle set a hand on Mal's shoulder to further invite her. "No, no," she declined. "But thank you. Unfortunately…" She glanced back to the way the soldiers had come, in the direction of Villeneuve, just past the mountains. "There are people who still need me, Ben. And we were toxic, and you know it." She squeezed his hands tightly. "If you want to try again, one day, I'd be happy too. But by God's, Ben, you were my slave! I owned you! We had everyone thinking I was assaulting you! You've lost your finger and your toes and you'll never sit up right again!"

She released his hands then, brushed off his shoulders, and then cupped his face briefly. "I did a number on you. And you shouldn't start relationships on those messes. Love shouldn't be made with swords. I want you to stay here, with them. Let them take care of you. Be a teenager for a little longer. Audrey and everyone will be back soon. You need time to get over me and heal. I have to go and be the queen. But… one day… if you can find it in you…"

"I'll call you up," Ben cut her off, smiling assuredly.

"I don't want you to forgive me…"

"I already have." He took her face then and pressed their foreheads together. She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Thank you, Mal, I should have known you'd pull through."

Mal smiled, despite everything that had happened. Then she pulled back and shook hands with Adam. She tried to shake Belle's hand, but Belle pulled her into a hug, dropping pages of poetry to the ground as she did. Mal looked extremely uncomfortable. Ben laughed and wasn't surprised to see the purple ink that had been scribbled on the edges of all his notes, dictating things like: "He's okay. He's walking again. Why is your son such a romantic sap?"

Mal finally managed to release herself from his mom's grasp(and Belle quickly replaced her body with his in a giant hug from behind) and Ben watched her stumble through the gravel as she began to walk away. "When will I see you again?" he called.

Mal blushed. That same bright red, rare blush that he was coming to associate with himself. "Probably tonight?" she shrugged. "After all, you're still the boy of my dreams."

And on that note, she left him safely with his parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may be mad that I didn't let Ben and Mal get together. I have a reason - the reason being that I do not support toxic relationships. Both of these poor children need a break from each other after all this trauma. Poor Ben was just released. Trying to shove them into a relationship would result in dysfunction and inbalance.


End file.
